Step 7 Create Web Sites > IMAGES
Images such as graphics, banners, icons, line drawings, animations or photographs can enhance and enrich a web page and make it more interesting for visitors.
Good Design Attributes when using images are that they are quick to download, appropriate, clear and easy to see, and simple. Images can be used to divide up sections of a page. Make sure there is some space around images, or the page may look too cluttered.
Quick Download
Images can slow down the loading of a page, so their use should be limited, or carefully managed. Large images take the longest to load on a web page, so if you put one at the top of your page, your visitor may not see any text, and give up waiting and leave.
A compromise is to use small photos, or thumbnails, that can be clicked on for a larger version. However, large numbers of small images on a single page can take longer to load than one large image, depending on the amount of data on the entire page.
Once loaded, an image is in the visitor’s computer, so will be quick to load if the image is repeated on another page. Resize and Crop your images to trim them of unwanted areas, and to make them smaller.
Copyright
Be careful of infringing copyright laws if taking images off another website - always get the owner’s permission.
If you wish to protect your original images, consider inserting a watermark across the middle of the image, or use a digital watermark, which doesn’t alter the image. Alternatively, simply add a © copyright symbol with your name and the year to one corner of the image. It can still be cropped by determined users, but will deter most people.
Find Images
Online image libraries can provide the images you need or create your own.
Animation Factory has several thousand FREE Animations, web graphics and clipart items
Photos has heaps of images to download
Free ClipArt and Logos
eBook and eProduct Covers
eBook cover converts any image into an eBook or eProduct cover. Click on the Sales Graphic Generator picture from this home page to convert your image. Free.
A much more professional eBook or eProduct Cover can be created with Dynamite Covers. Makes your product look so real that people will reach out into their computer screens and grab it, to maximize your clickthroughs, downloads and sales.
Create Your Own Images
You’ll need a graphics program, or image editor, to create your own images. http://www.thinkall.com/product_image_over.htm is offering a free CD of a graphics program called Gimp, that rivals Adobe Photoshop. Or you can download it free from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/.
Web-Safe Colours
Also known as browser-safe colours or palette, these are a set of 216 colours that will look the same on every browser. Using a non-safe colour may mean the colour displays quite differently to the way you intended. Your image program may have them installed already, or a good tutorial on this can be found at HTML Goodies. It also explains about the hex codes for colours, which are the HTML codes that the browsers read to display them.
Alt Tags
An Alt tag is the text inserted behind an image. It is displayed when your mouse hovers over an image, or when the image itself cannot be displayed It stands for alternative text. Your web builder will have instructions on inserting alt tags. Increasing number of people are using palmtop computers and mobile phones, and may run their browsers in text-only mode.
Formats
Two commonly used formats are JPEG and GIF -
- GIF files are comparatively small in size, and are best for images with areas of solid colour, such as logos, drawings, buttons,, cartoons and maps.
- JPEG files are much larger in size, and are used for photographs, or illustrations with many colours or complicated shading.
Hyperlinks
Images can be linked to other pages, or points of a page, by inserting a link into them. Much the same as inserting hyperlinks into text links.
Step 7 Create Web Sites < Go To > Step 8 Web Site Marketing
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