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Asked: 2026-05-22T01:32:35+00:00

So this will no doubt come as a stupid question from an ignorant person,

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So this will no doubt come as a stupid question from an ignorant person, but I was wondering if there is any easy way out there of resizing an image BEFORE a user downloads it?

I am pulling in images from a 3rd party database, which I have no control over. I’m also not allowed to cache anything from it under their T&C.

They give a few different sizes for each image. But I am ending up resizing half of them on my pages with CSS.

So I was wondering if maybe using php or javascript or something! (I really have no clue do I), I could resize these images before my users waste time downloading much bigger versions.

The only reason I ask really, is that I know the Manchester United website kind of does it (with the aid of a piece of Adobe stuff I think), so I thought that maybe there might be something out there that anyone could use?

http://www.manutd.com/en/News-And-Features/Football-News/2011/May/Sir-Alex-Blackburn-reaction.aspx

http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx?h=179&la=ar-SA&w=480&rgn=0,78,1200,524
-> 18kb compared to 160kb -> http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx

(obviously I don’t want the cropping technique)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If the images are coming from a server you don’t control, the short answer is NO. You can’t resize an image until you’ve downloaded it. Without caching a resized version, you are at the mercy of the 3rd party server. Unless you use a server side proxy program, yet this is probably more trouble than it is worth.

    Yet as I’ve pointed out in the comments, http://www.manutd.com will resize their images for you. In the link h=height, w=width and rgn=region (left,top,right,bottom)

    http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx?h=80&la=ar-SA&w=120&rgn=0,0,1200,800

    You only need the h and the w. If your h and w don’t match the aspect of the image it will crop rather than skew. look at both of these. The image is 1200×800 aspect ratio 3×2

    w=240, h=160 3×2 (whole image)

    http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx?w=240&h=160

    w=160, h=160 1×1 (cropped)

    http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx?w=160&h=160

    After I’ve played with it more, you can get by with just the width(w), and I’m assuming this also applies to just the height. (EDIT: yes it does)

    Whole image, 480px wide…

    http://www.manutd.com/~/media/64B766EE4A37488AA65DC7B08E5ABC1B.ashx?w=480

    MORE EDITING: Understand, any time you see a ‘?’ in a url, you are requesting a page from a program, and the stuff after the ‘?’ are parameters for the program, and ‘&’ seperates the parameters. The server at manutd.com is using a program to resize their images, just like a proxy program would resize images for you. If you did resort to a proxy program, if it was a decent one, it would take a link like http://YourServer.host/proxyProgram.php?img=imageHost.org/imageName.jpg&w=240&h=160 given a link such as that there are all sorts of server side solutions to resize the image.

    Yet without a cache there is the possibility that you will resize the same image many times, and just the thought of that turns me off.

    I’m gonna quit editing now!

    Have fun!

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