Diagnostic Improvements With Photos Hosted By Picasa

For some time, blog owners would note mysterious problems with photos on their blogs, in various ways - depending upon the browser in use. Some blog owners and readers would report a mysterious red "X", others a big, blank space - and still others would see nothing at all, not even a space. The only common symptom would be

My pictures have vanished!

Recently, photos hosted under Picasa changed that vague symptom, by displaying two "place holder" icons, depending upon either of two commonly diagnosed problems which had caused the missing photos.

Photos hosted under Picasa (including photos uploaded to the blog using the "Insert image" wizard in post editor), and subsequently being either deleted or made private, are now being replaced by either of two diagnostic icons when referenced. This improvement will go a long way to resolving much confusion about missing photos, which has long been a source of despair in the Blogger community.

If your photo has been deleted, you will see this icon - an exclamation point inside a triangle.



If your photo is now private, you will see this icon - a dash inside a circle.



These icons are simply the new symptoms of a problem - they are not the problem itself.

• If you just made your Picasa photo album private, maybe when setting up your Google+ account, you can correct the problem easily enough. Just login to Google, go into Picasa, and make the photos public, again.
• If you just deleted the Picasa photo album, maybe when setting up your Google+ account - or having deleted the Google account, however, you are out of luck. Picasa does not provide any un deletion options.
• If these are not your photos, and you are linking them from somebody else's Picasa album, you are likewise out of luck.

However, at least you can now detect - and diagnose - the problem, when your photos are hosted by Picasa.

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