You are staring at your monitor waiting for image to download. It finally appears but it has blurry edges. You go to next page but can't read text because of dark image in background. The next page has animated images, that don't seem to stop. The spinning globes keep spinning. The last page has a large graphic on it, which is a link. You click on it for more information but it goes nowhere. You leave site in frustration.Images are an essential ingredient for Web Site design. You want visitors to have an aesthetically pleasing experience. Properly preparing your images is necessary to enhance appearance of your web site. In Part I of this article I will explain:
When to use images for your web site. What image file formats should you use on Web.
When to use images for your web site - Navigation Graphical buttons can link to other pages or resources.
Image Maps – this is a graphic that contains several links on it. It has several "hot spots" or invisible buttons, you can click on. For example you could have a photograph of your family and put a hot spot on each person's face that links to that person's web site.
Logos and Trademarks – your business or organization's trademark are crucial for name recognition and branding.
Thumbnails – this is a small, "thumbnail-sized version of an image. When you click on it, you jump to another page with a larger version of same image. The visitor can see many different, small images on first page without having to wait for larger files of larger images to load.
What are different image file formats? Web graphics can be categorized into two file formats: bitmap and vector. Bitmap – these are composed of individual values for each color displayed. The larger dimensions of image, larger associated file size will be for same graphic. When viewed with magnification, a bitmap resembles a series of little squares, each of which has a color value that contributes to overall shape. Bitmaps have a very rough appearance when viewed closely but form images when viewed from a distance.
Bitmaps are best suited for photos, drop-shadow effects and soft, glowing or blurry edges.
Vector – these store information about image in mathematical instructions that are then interpreted and displayed.
Vector graphics are best suited for line art, shapes and illustrations.
Image File Formats Graphic file formats used on Web are GIF, JPEG and PNG
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) GIF is a platform-independent file format that is limited to a display of 256 colors. GIF has been adopted by most developers because of its small file size.
GIF is considered a "lossless" format. This means that as image is compressed, no information is lost.