Artistic Liscense - Graphics in Web Page Design

A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Samwell

Basics of Graphic Use in Web Page Design

It is hard to stress enough, the importance of graphics in web page design. When the internet first started, it was all text based, and you had to have an engineering degree to use it.

Then in 1989 a systems designer named Tim Berners-Lee single-handedly invented what we now know as the World Wide Web. This innovation made it very simple to surf the internet, and design web pages that weren't totally text based.

If you don't use graphics your page is very boring, as graphics add a lot of visual appeal, as well as illustrating the points you are trying to make on the web page. Graphics also come into use as logo's, photo galleries on sports or celebrity pages, or even pictures of your own family, although this isn't really recommended.

Types of Graphics Used for Web Page Design

The two main types of graphics used by web page designers are Gifs (Graphic Image File Format) and Jpegs(Joint Photographic Experts Group). The main reason for designing with these types of graphics is that the file size is usually fairly small, which helps your page to load more quickly. I am sure that all of you have opened a web page that takes forever to load. This is a basic symptom of poor graphic page design.

The reason that Gif and Jpeg graphics work so well is the way that they handle compression. They use a smaller bit rate than other types of graphic, such as bitmaps etc. This is the reason that they load more quickly than other types of graphic, and thus the reason for using them on web pages.

Now there are times that you may have to use a lot of graphics on a page, such as a sports or celebrity page, or even your vacation pictures if you have a family site. In my case, I come from two very large families - 28 aunts and uncles by birth and approximately 120 first cousins. This means that I run two family web sites, and end up putting pages with photos from family reunions and weddings and such.

Now to put such a large amount of pictures on one page, you would be looking at huge, very slowly loading, pages. The solution to this is to use thumbnails, or small sized pictures that are links to a larger sized picture. I have actually put over one hundred pictures on a web page and still had it load more quickly than some of the single pictures it links to.

This technique takes some practice and a good web page editor, or a good knowledge of HTML code, but it is very interesting to learn, and can give you a real sense of accomplishment. Plus, think how good you would look with the family :).

Special Graphic Types Used in Web Page Design

To get a real special effect on a web page you can use different, more dynamic types of graphic objects. These can range from something as simple as an animated gif to something as complicated as a flash movie.

If you are looking for an already created animated gif, there are a lot of sites online that offer free graphics, including animated gifs. Most of these sites have a large enough selection that you can find what you want, fairly easily. Another source for animated gifs is MS Office. If you have MS Office installed on your computer, you can open Word or PowerPoint, then click on the insert menu and choose picture - clip art.

Once the clip art dialog box is open, you will see a button that says Clips Online. If you click on that button you will be taken to the Microsoft clip art site where you will find a huge variety of pictures, including animated gifs. I actually use this site before any others because I can usually find what I am looking for quite easily, as there is a very good search engine to use.