System and computer-implemented method for incorporating an image into a page of content for transmission over a telecommunications network

1. A computer-implemented method of incorporating an image into a page of content for transmission over a telecommunications network from a server to a client for display by a browser running on the client, the method comprising:

providing an image data file encoding said image in accordance with a standard image format;

providing a page of content in a markup language, said page of content being intended for transmission over a telecommunications network from a server to a client for display by a browser running on the client, said page of content including a link or reference to the image data file for incorporating the image within the page of content;

converting said image from said standard image format of the image data file into a format in which the image is encoded using said markup language; and

incorporating the image encoded using said markup language into the page of content to replace said link or reference to the image data file prior to transmission of the page of content over a telecommunications network;

wherein the converted image is built up on a line-by-line basis;

wherein each line of the converted image comprises one or more HyperText Markup Language (HTML) image units, each HTML image unit being located in just a single line of the converted image and formed from a row of one or more consecutive pixels of the image which have the same color,

wherein a first line of the converted image has a first arbitrary length and a second line of the converted image has a second arbitrary length, wherein both the first and second arbitrary lengths are independent of the lengths of other lines in the converted image.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the image encoded using said markup language is incorporated into the page of content in response to parsing said reference or link with the page of content.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the conversion of the image from said standard image format into the markup language is performed in response to receiving a request from the client for the page of content.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the converted image encoded using said markup language for use in responding to future requests for the page of content.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the converted image is stored separately from the page of content for future incorporation into said page of content.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising transmitting the page of content incorporating the image encoded using said markup language from a server to a receiving client.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein a browser on the receiving client renders the page of content so as to display the image within said page by directly using the image encoded by said markup language and without having to retrieve any image source file.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising reducing the volume of the image encoded using said markup language.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein reducing the volume includes lowering the resolution of the image.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein lowering the resolution of the image is performed prior to converting the image.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein lowering the resolution of the image is performed as part of converting the image.

12. The method of claim 8 , wherein lowering the resolution of the image comprises subsampling or averaging the image.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein converting the image includes adding a watermark to the image in markup form.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein said markup language comprises hypertext markup language (html).