Change to how Canvas treats linked course image files?

[seberry]

One of our instructors uses a list of links to course files in each module.

Many of these are .jpg or .png files, but he's created them as links to course files, not as image > display as text link. In the last three terms (since we started using Canvas) those image links automatically opened in a new tab.

Now suddenly the image files will only download. He hasn't changed anything, and this is not browser-specific (we tested this). In addition, the link text itself does nothing now, you have to click the icon at the end of the link to download the image.

Does anyone know what recent changes my account for this? It's going to be very time consuming to re-link all these materials, since the current configuration has no "open in new tab" option.

I've checked the release notes and can't find any explanation, though there seems to have been some changes to the link download icon. No indication why current course file links would start behaving differently. Thanks for any insight.

[chriscas]

Hi @seberry,

Do you know the exact process he used to create the links?  I wonder if they are very old (from a previous rich content editor) or something slightly unusual was done to create them.  No matter what I do with an image right now on our Canvas environment, it opens in a new tab like you have in your "past behavior" screenshots (assuming I set it to not be embedded).  You have the download icon next to the links too, which I don't have, and seems to signify something is a bit unusual.  It may be a lot of work, but perhaps everything just needs to be linked again within the current Canvas RCE to make sure all of the links are in the current format and hopefully will work as you desire.

-Chris

[Chris_Grant]

Hi, I'm the instructor mentioned in the original post. Here is the process I use to insert URLs pointing at image files.

1. Open RCE. Enter some text.
2. Select the text I want to use as the link text.
3. On the RCE menu, select Insert > Document > Course Documents.
4. In the "Add" pane which opens, switch to "Images" on the drop-down menu.
5. Pick the image I want, and click Save.

To be clear, I am not trying to embed an image using an <img> tag. I'm creating a hyperlink (<a>) to a file which happens to be an image (e.g. PNG format).

The current behavior I observe (in Chrome) is that if I hold down the control key and click on the link, the image displays in a new tab. The same works if I Shift-click, except the image opens in a new window. If I click on the link without holding down any modifier keys, then nothing happens. This is change relative to the way Canvas behaved just a few weeks ago, when clicking on the link caused the image to be displayed in a tab (I think it was in the current tab, but it may have been in a new tab).

[chriscas]

Hi @Chris_Grant,

Thanks for outlining your process.  I can now at least replicate what you're seeing.  I think the link behavior may have change quite a few months back, but I'm unable to find that change offhand right now.  It sounds like your "old" links work properly, and just the new ones are broken, is that right?  If so, would you be open to tweaking your process for creating these links?

Here's what I tried that seemed to get the desired behavior you want.

in the RCE, without typing any text, put your cursor where you want the link.  Use the image icon to embed the image (I know you don't want it embedded in the end).  Once you do this, you'll get an "image options" box if you click the image.  When you click that image options, you can select "Display Text Link (Opens in a new tab)" under display options.  That will switch the embedded image to a hyperlink with the filename as the link.  You can change that text to whatever you want instead of the filename.

I know this might not be the exact answer you're looking for, but I hope it might be a workable solution.

-Chris

[Chris_Grant]

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It sounds like your "old" links work properly, and just the new ones are broken, is that right?

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No, that's not correct. Links created in January of 2022 (and which used to work), and links created 5 minutes ago exhibit the same behavior--clicking on the link without holding down a modifier key fails to display the linked image.

I'm not thrilled about the proposed workaround of going through the image-embedding function. (I recognize that the end result is a hyperlink element, <a>, and not an <img> element.) Inserting links that way does not produce the inline download icon/link. Also, I'm creating lists of links to a variety of resource types, some are image files but some are not, and (for my own sanity) I'd like to have a single workflow independent of target resource type.

My current work-around is to instruct students to use control-click when clicking on image links. Using control-click on the image link causes the image to display successfully in a new browser tab.

[DrNufer]

Likely not what you are looking for, but you can create something of glossary-like accordion menus to toggle pictures.  Here is some info on that.

https://youtu.be/MOiWzjd7AgM?t=797

It might not be a direct solution for your hyperlink issues, but it might be a technique you will want to file away.  I've used an iteration of this on many course pages.

[seberry]

Hi and thanks for your reply. This may be old code but we are still wondering why it worked fine for the last three terms.
These were not created as image links, they're <a> links to image files in the Files area. I can easily create this kind of link in Canvas using "external link" and entering the Canvas file path. In that case the image opens in a new tab. This is the current code generated for this type of text link.

This is the code for the existing links, which opened in a new tab until recently:

Unfortunately, modifying the old link code to match the new required code will be very time consuming. There may not be a better solution, but it would be helpful to know what changed since last term and why.