Upload an image
In the article editor, click the image button in the toolbar and pick a file from your computer. PNG, JPEG and WebP are accepted, and nothing else — GIF and SVG are refused, so convert them first. The largest file you can upload is 25 MB.
The image is inserted where your cursor is, at its own proportions rather than squashed into a square, and it is centered with the same spacing a paragraph gets.
Resize it
Drag the small handle at the bottom-right corner of the image. There are no width and height boxes to type into — you size it by eye, and what you see in the editor is what the article ships with. For screenshots of a small part of a screen, keep them large enough to read; for full-window screenshots, pull them down so they do not dominate the article.
What a visitor sees
The image appears inline in the article at the size you set. When a visitor clicks it, the full-size original opens in a new browser tab — so you can keep the picture modest inside the article and still let people look closely.
Tips for screenshots
- Crop tightly. Show only the part of the screen the step refers to. A whole-browser screenshot rarely earns its space.
- Give white-background screenshots a border. A one-pixel light-grey border stops the picture dissolving into the page behind it.
- Annotate before you upload. Arrows and numbered callouts have to be added in your own screenshot tool — the article editor has no drawing tools.
- Describe the important ones in words too. The editor has no alt-text field, so anything a reader must not miss should also be written in the text around the image. That also covers people using a screen reader.
What happens to the file
Uploads go through Yaplet's own server rather than straight to storage. The file is checked to make sure it really is the image type it claims to be, and the metadata cameras and phones embed — including location — is stripped out before the file is stored. Compressing large screenshots before uploading is still worth it: it is the single biggest thing you control in how fast an article loads.