Graphics have a wide variety of uses. They help convey meaning, illustrate a
point, and provide web site branding. Graphics are not necessary on most sites,
but they are an important visual element. The Internet without graphics would
be.... well... boring.
What would a site on antique cars be without car photos? Or a site on
cartoons be without cartoon graphics? What about Joe's Widgets? His site
wouldn't be the same without his product pictures and business logo.
Graphics are an important part of any web site, but here are some points to
keep in mind:
Unique
is best
The vast majority of web sites use borrowed, stolen, cloned, canned, copied
and generic graphics. These graphics can be found on any number of
"free"
graphic sites on the Internet (or people just see one they like and take it).
The problem with using the same old graphics that everyone else does is that
your pages tend to look like the same old pages that everyone else does. The
other problem is that most of these graphics are just plain ugly.
So where do you get new, fresh, original artwork? Why, you buy and make them
yourself. Royalty-free clip art has become so cheap that people can now buy it
in huge, monster 250,000 image packs, complete with free fonts and photos....
all for less than $100.
Unfortunately, these images are usually in a format for print (EPS and TIFF
are the usual formats), which means they need to be opened in a graphic program
like PaintShop Pro or Adobe Photoshop and converted to the right height/width
and dots per inch. Web graphics are 72 dots per inch. GIF graphics need to be
set to 256 or indexed color, with JPEG graphics remaining millions or true
color. If that all sounds like gobbledy gook, well don't worry. There are some
programs that automatically convert EPS and TIFF
graphics to GIF and JPEG.
If you don't have and can't afford a good graphics program, you can still
make professional quality "text" graphics using the text graphic maker
on http://www.zyris.com Not only are the graphics professional quality, but you
can choose from a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors. It's a great way to
make a professional looking site title and text navigation buttons.
For those who want to add photos to their site, flatbed scanners can be had
for under $100, which often includes a free graphics editing program. Digital
cameras are also rapidly falling in price.
Creating your own graphics will often make them look far better than the vast
majority of generic web graphics found on the free graphics sites. By combining
images and changing colors, you can create truly unique graphics for your web
site.
Graphics
= download time
Here are some tips to keep in mind with using graphics on your site:
Keep graphics small - Make them 5-10K (or less) and use only a few. Any site
which has a 100k graphic as the first item to download will have visitors
reaching for their BACK button every time. Also, use the same graphics over and
over again so they cache and viewers aren't downloading all new ones on every
page.
Here is where a good graphic optimizing program helps. Running a 25K file
through an optimizer will often reduce it's size by as much as 80 percent (that
reduces the 25K graphic to 5K). Even if you just shave 1K off every graphic, it
can save a visitor valuable seconds in download time.
Ever wonder why you go to some pages and wait and wait, and then everything
appears all at once? The site designer didn't use good HTML design with their
graphics. Use HEIGHT=[# pixels] WIDTH=[# pixels] with all your graphics. This
lets browsers know how big to make the hole where the graphics will go so it can
go on and add things like text. The pages don't load any faster, but they have
the illusion of loading faster.
