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Images |
Note: All external links mentioned in this article were working when published, but some may no longer be active.
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A picture = 1000 words. That holds true on the Net too. Besides being able to express a thousand words, a single small image can take up as many Kb as 1000's of words of plain text. That's why it is so imperative to use images only when necessary, and use only small images. A few graphics break the monotony of long paragraphs of textual information. It is a good practise to ensure that the files are small (less than 10 Kb), so that the webpage downloads fast, and the user does not get tired of waiting and move on to another site. If you have big images, use online image reduction utilities (covered in the Tune Up section) to cut down the size of your images. When visitors to your page are using a text-only browser, or a graphical browser with images turned off (many people do), the images on your page are not visible to them. They can, however, see any description you give instead of the image, so always use the ALT TAG in the <img> to describe the image. This way they can at least get an idea of what that particular image is all about. Can I use my bmp files? No, as far as the Web goes, only two types of image formats can be used: * gif (for flat colours) and * jpg (for graded colours like photographs). Where can I get images from? Why not try the Net? There are hundreds of sites that offer you images (or web clip art) for your pages for free. These sites offer you background images, icons (email, new, etc), buttons, lines, and generic images. When you see any image that you like, right-click your mouse on top of that image and save it on your hard disk. Watch out for copyright information. MediaBuilder Free Image Library is a nice site for free images. Don't link to an image on someone else's page - that's never welcome. What happens if they delete the image tomorrow, or shift it to some other directory or site? It's always better to save that image, and upload it to your site. If you'd like to create a banner or button for your page, use MediaBuilder's Animated Banner Maker or ButtonMaker. Remember: When it comes to images, less is more! |
Introduction
Free Image Library |