Adding Images and Background to HTML Pages

IMAGES IN HTML PAGES

Images are essential in Web designing a page since they not only give visual appeal but also effectively communicate an ideal or concept. On the Web, graphics in the form of icon images can be very useful for navigation and also act as interpreter for non-English speaking Web surfers to your site.

It also contains some very useful tips related to image size reduction. These can be very useful when you intend to incorporate large size images into your Web page. Though it is very unwise to incorporate large images but there may be situations where the design of the page compels you.

Image Formats for the web

Images generally used for the Web are of two specific formats –GIF or JPEG format. The Comp u Serve GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. It is a widely used format in the Web design process. It is very simple to convert your image to this format; all you have to do is to open the image in an Image editing software, like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop. Then use the Save As option in Paint Shop Pro or Export option in Adobe Photoshop and save it as a GIF file. While saving your images as GIF, you will see options like GIF87, GIF89 or just GIF, don’t worry as all of them will work. They are basically different versions of the GIF format.

The GIF 87 format is the original format, while GIF89 is the enhanced format with features like transparency and interlacing. Since this format is limited to 256 colors, it is ideal for logs, icons, and line drawings and not so suitable for high-resolution photographs.

GIF files are compressed files using the LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression scheme. This is the is a loss-free compression algorithm.A loss-free compression guarantees that the original data is reconstructed without any loss, i.e. the reconstructed image is exactly the same as the original image.

GIF file format has a feature called interlacing. An interlaced GIF gives a blurred full view the image as soon as the image starts getting downloaded and then slowly in 3or 4 passes the complete picture emerges. This feature downloading at a good speed. It keeps the user in an illusion so that the user does not get impatient while the image downloads though the image takes approximately the same time, as it would have taken without being interlaced. This feature makes the. GIF file a preferred image format for the WWW.

Transparency is yet authoress feature, which makes the GIE format unique. This feature gives the GIF image a transparent background. When the user views this image’s background.

JPEG is the other most widely used image format on the web. It stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It was basically designed to store high-resolution photographic images. This format uses a lossy compression technique that discards data form the images whose image size a lossy compression technique that discard data from the image non-essential to the display.

Ted Turner is a senior web designer with Toronto Web Services company specializing in Website programming services, Database Development, code cleaning, website design, information architecture, content development.

Ted Turner is a senior web designer with Toronto Web Services company specializing in Website programming services, Database Development, code cleaning, website design, information architecture, content development.