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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T19:59:39+00:00

Is there any way to render a default image in an HTML <img> tag,

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Is there any way to render a default image in an HTML <img> tag, in case the src attribute is invalid (using only HTML)? If not, what would be your lightweight way to work around it?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You asked for an HTML only solution…

     <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<html lang="en">

<head>
  <title>Object Test</title>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>

<body>

  <p>
    <object data="https://stackoverflow.com/does-not-exist.png" type="image/png">
      <img src="https://cdn.sstatic.net/Img/unified/sprites.svg?v=e5e58ae7df45" alt="Stack Overflow logo and icons and such">
    </object>
  </p>

</body>

</html>

    Since the first image doesn’t exist, the fallback (the sprites used on this web site*) will display. And if you’re using a really old browser that doesn’t support object, it will ignore that tag and use the img tag. See caniuse website for compatibility. This element is widely supported by all browsers from IE6+.

    * Unless the URL for the image changed (again), in which case you’ll probably see the alt text.

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