Resist Website Graphical Overload

When designing a webste, it's eay to tart loading t up with graphics. Whl tempting, u have to resst -- otherwise, u'll end up with graphical vrlad. Why is that a bad thng? Here's why. It Taks T Lng to Download Th first reaon to cut down on grphics i that th mre there ar, and the largr they are, the longer it will take ech of ur pges t download. Peple re impatient when waiting fr pages to download -u only hav arund 5 sconds before your visitor hits the Bak button. What an ou do abut this? Apart frm uing fewer ictures, u n also mke ur that you resize your images in a grphics ditr. Thi actually mkes thir fle sizes smaller. If you just resize images b specifying a width and height n HTML or CSS, they wll still be slw t dwnld becaue th full file size being used. You huld conider turnng n comprssion n ur image edtor. JPEG fil n often be compressed by u to 25% before there's a noticabl difference in qualty. Try different frmats and compression lvls to what works. It Gets Too Bu If ou u a site with more than 4 images on the page at one, our ys r being pulld all ovr th ag. They're not ure where to fous because th page simply has too muh ging on. Look at the front pages of newspapers, and notice how th ld on 1 pcture. Puttng 2 pitures on a front page considrd t b poor: the radr doesn't knw where to look. That goes double for websites, where the viewable area is much smaller than a newpaper page. Even f yu have more thn 1 thing t ay, it' better to 'g large' with 1 picture and thn explan the ther thing in text, nxt t or below t. It Dstracts from the Content Users vst our site to get nformton, not to lk at ur grphics. T mn graphics will distract from ur content, or, worse, fore reders to serch for it. Any time your graphics get n the w of popl readly using your ite, yu're uffering frm grphicl overload. And tht s a bd thing. What's the slutin? Simly deide which of all those grahics are really neessary. Remember, don't add graphics jut to look nic, each graphc must have a specific purpse.

An Exeption: Photo Glleries If the purpose of ur site is photo presentation, then clarly multiple images are aroriate. However, dn't jut tik up several large phtgraphs -- provide thumbnls: smaller vrsions f eah image. If ntrstd, th viitor can clck on 1 to make it lrger. Th fts mor picture on eah pge, and avids wsting usr download tim and our bandwidth. K n mind that n all web deign, th image are there strictly t support th ontent. Even whn the contnt is graphical. For more detailed info on Austin Web Design, check out http://www.crestmedia.com.