[lkjh]

I noticed this picture http://www.ping-timeout.de/sig/149.jpg in someone's signature and it displays the information about the person viewing it. How does it work?

[lkjh]

Thanks for the link. I'm still wondering how the picture is generated to include text. It must be a command line image creating program. When the image is loaded by itself in one's browser, a request is sent. The information from that request is used by the server to issue a command to generate an image based on a template. The information from that request is filtered and passed as fields to the template. However, embedding the image in another server's page would seem to complicate things, and I would like for someone to elaborate on this and explain the interaction between the browser loading the page and the image server. When the browser sends the request to hackforums.net to view a certain page, hackforums.net sends the page as requested, and an image in someone's signature is loaded. If hackforums.net sent the image request to another server, how does the image server know the browser's info?

[lkjh]

I thought of how this could work: when the browser sends a request, hackforums.net supplies the page with html code that says to retrieve the image from another server and place it here. So hackforums.net doesn't store the image, and the browser must send a request to retrieve it. Still, if anyone would like to explain the specifics of the process, that would be fascinating, much more so than reading the protocol itself.