What makes a website a cut above the rest? How does a website score a good or a bad rating? The web graphics … yes… this acts as the typical yardstick when it comes to web page rating. When planning the page layout the assimilation of the chunks of texts and graphics has to be well taken care of. It is the superb combination of these two segments that lends an HTML document its desired credibility. Now, what are "Graphic" and "File Formats"?
As per a layman’s definition, graphics are the image files. Yes they are; but if I ask for a more concrete and professional answer what would you say? As per the definition of a computer professional, graphics are technical programs commanding the processors to exhibit the different pictures as necessary. And “File Format”, on the other hand, refers to the format for encoding information in a file. Several Graphic file formats can be used over the web, and this tutorial has been specifically designed to provide a comprehensive synopsis of the graphic file formats at service in the family unit named “WWW” – World Wide Web.
Welcome to Lesson 8 - Web Graphics and File Formats
GIF, JPG, and PNG are some of the most predominant graphic file formats. As a web author it is expected that you be aware of the basic features that sets apart these 3 significant formats, and subsequently choose the best. Make your image look impressive to the maximum extent possible, and compressed so that it doesn’t take much time to load at the readers’ end. When a browser views an image file in “mark-up lingo”, the file location can easily be interpreted from different workstations. Say for example, when the HTML graphic information is being displayed on a Macintosh processor, the browser robotically construes and displays the graphic file in the file format applicable for Macintosh. And when on Windows browser, it comes up as a Windows graphic. So what do you understand? Web Graphics are autonomous.
Graphics Interchange Format – GIF – is by far the best and the most widely accepted file format for displaying images over the internet. The fewer and flatter the image colors are, the better will be the performance scale of the GIF format. Whether your graphics are comprised of charts or tables, forms or simple chunks of texts, GIF can be relied upon for the best output. Enclosed within this format are 256 colors. Turning to the GIF compression feature, the same work simply wonders on image files with solid colors. GIF images can be made to appear "lucent" that lends the images a 3D effect of being enclosed within non-rectangular precincts.
A coined form of – Joint Photographic Expert Group – JPEG is yet another popular file format. During the dawn days of web graphics and file formats, the JPEG images never shared pages with the rest of the web content. But this is however not the case as of now. As far as compression for this specific file format is concerned, it works efficiently for images with colors swerved spatially over squat areas. JPEG is however not gifted with the transparency feature.
Apart from the GIF and JPEG formats, PICT, TIFF, PNG, EPS and BMP are other graphic file formats to name some.
From an author’s perspective, following are some of the points of consideration when using Graphics
- It is highly recommended to keep the file size as small as possible; and this is not what I say or feel; it is something that is suggested by graphic gurus across the globe. Why? Simple, the larger the size of the image files, the greater will be the time consumption for loading the image. Having to wait for such long spans of time just to bring a picture into view is really frustrating.
- When selecting graphic file formats, keep in mind the average monitor size and resolution used by net surfers. Stick to 480 (width) X 300 (height) pixels as this will rule out possibilities of your images getting distorted.
- When converting images to GIF, make use of graphics programs options like "no dithering" that moderates loud background colors to a great extent.
- Why clutter all your images on a single web page? Why not link them as external image files and make it downloadable whenever a viewer clicks on the hyperlink.
- Most importantly, make sure that your images are context sensitive.
At the end of the day it is the selection of the graphics format that matters the most. Choose a file format that pledges to make your images look good, but at the same time appears quickly on your visitor's computer.
Original Authors: Rajat
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 26/05/2009
