title: Is it safe to use <a href="data; ..."> to display images?
body: <p>I've learned that it's possible to embed an image in an HTML page like so, instead of linking to a separate image file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="data:image/png;base64,...(blah blah base64-encoded png goes here)..."
    width="70" height="38" alt="image embedded using base64 encoding!"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is this "safe", as in will all modern browsers be able to view the image, as long as I stick to common formats like PNG/JPG? Are there any downsides, other than base64-encoding the image increasing the image size by a bit?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>