You've planned your content, you've played with HTML and you've
selected a colour scheme. Now add some graphical spice.
As Internet connections get faster and cheaper, people are beginning to lose
their prejudices about web sites that use a lot of graphics. Yet, there are
those who will always browse with images turned off, but it is increasingly
becoming the case that if you want people to look at your site, then it needs
to look good.
There are exceptions, where content is so compelling that design doesn't
matter. Just remember, however good a site looks, it is nothing without quality
content.
Ready-Made Graphics
When you decide to add graphics to your site, you have 2 basic options.
Either create your own images or make use of the numerous collections of
royalty-free web graphics. These can come from many sources, the most popular
being direct from the web. If you look at the web graphics section at Yahoo you'll
find a varied selection of free images you can use for your site, including
e-mail buttons, background images and horizontal rules. Other popular sources
include the clip art collections that come with most graphics packages these
days.
There are, however, a couple of caveats. First, the quality of these images
can most charitably be described as 'varied' – some are pretty good, but some
are downright awful. Second, you need to bear in mind that every other novice
web designer has access to the very same selection of images, and it does tend
to show. On the plus side, the graphics are almost always completely free and
you don't need any artistic skills to use them.
Homemade Graphics
If you want to create a unique web site, you have to create your own graphics
– simple as that. There is an ever-increasing array of software to help you do
this, ranging from freeware and shareware to full commercial products. Some of
the better packages will cater for every need from start to finish. All you
need provide is the talent and imagination.
JPEG Images
Before you start, you need to learn about the two image formats used on the
web. First there is the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). This achieves
a high level of compression by separating the colours from the details and
processing them separately. When they are recombined, you have a colour
picture. But this is more than you need to know. What is important is that this
works very well for graphics with smooth colour transitions and few sharp edges
– typically photographic images – and looks terrible for line art and blocks of
text. The result is that, when used appropriately, a jpeg image will achieve a
very small file size alongside a picture with thousands of colours and little
noticeable loss in quality.
GIF Images
The alternative is CompuServe's GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). A huge
image has its colours restricted to its own palette, which can contain up to
256 colours. GIF compression works by looking for repeating patterns within an
image – hence large areas of a single colour will produce a very small file –
but GIFs are also ideal for any line or text where it is vital to retain the
image's detail.
GIFs can also be used to tailor an image to a computer that can only display
256 colours. By limiting an image to the standard palette of 256 web-safe colours,
you can be almost certain it will appear the same in any browser. In practice,
it is preferable to strike a balance between using web-safe colours and
achieving the best image quality – then those users with better displays will
not be restricted by the lowest common denominator.
The humble GIF has also a few tricks hidden up its sleeve. The first of
these is the ability to set one of the colours in the palette to be transparent
– which means that whatever this colour appears on the image, the background of
the web page will show through, allowing you to make the graphics blend in to a
much greater extent.
You can also string a load of images together into one file to create an
animated GIF. This means you can have animation on your page without requiring
any extra plug-ins. Bear in mind that every frame added to an animation adds to
the file's size, and unless used sparingly, animated GIFS can become very
tiresome.
X Marks The Spot
The main use of graphics on any site is usually to form a navigation system.
One way to achieve this is to make each option a separate image, but often it
can be neater to have your buttons as a single graphic. You can then use an
image map to link different areas to different pages. In the past, the only way
to do this was to create a server-side image map – the co-ordinates of a mouse
click would be sent to the server, which would then redirect you to a specific
page. But now any reasonably up-to-date browser supports client-side maps – a
few lines of code in the page itself define the hotspots, and the link goes
direct to the target page, with no fuss.
PNG Images
Soon you'll be hearing about another image format – the Portable Network
Graphic, or PNG. The file specification was designed with the web in mind, and
is already supported by the next generation of browsers. The PNG performs much
the same function as a GIF, with two main differences: PNG files are noticeably
smaller than GIF, and they can use alpha transparency. In other words, the
image can have varying degrees of transparency, so it will blend into any
background. But don't throw away your old tools yet – GIFs will be around for
some time to come.
Author Resource Box
Sandra Prior was born in Russia and is one of the most respected and
recognized computer hardware and software specialists on the Internet. For more
articles on tips, tricks and secrets to keep your computer running smoothly and
in tip top condition, subscribe to her newsletter at http://usacomputers.rr.nu and
http://sacomputers.rr.nu.
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