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ADD_GRAPHICS_TO_YOUR_WEBSITE_ _without_losing_your_mind
| ADD GRAPHICS TO YOUR WEBSITE - without losing your mind!
We've heard it over and over again - adding graphics to a
website is a GOOD thing. They can generally make your site more
appealing, illustrate points or products, and provide creative
icons for people to click through for more information.
So you are developing a website, and you really want to add cool
graphics. But how?
Well, you can run out and buy a bunch of expensive graphics
programs and 'dummies' books to learn how to use them.
Or you can sign up for courses, on or off-line, for various
amounts of money. But you'll probably be old and gray by the
time you sort through all the mumbo-jumbo you'll need to sort
through, or you'll be stressed to the max, and the opportunity
your website originally presented will be long- gone.
Adding graphic images to your site should be easy and fun.
It is possible to:
- find graphics you can use at little or no cost; or - jazz up
your own pictures or graphics
Throw the mumbo-jumbo commands, books, and classrooms out the
window. If you just want to find graphics or photos you can use,
start by doing a search on your favorite search engine(s) for
'royalty-free graphics.' You'll probably be kept busy for quite
awhile chasing down the links you'll find. Many of the sites
that provide these graphics also include instructions or coding
to add them directly to your site - so you don't have to be a
rocket scientist to jazz up your web pages, after all!
Here's a few things to remember when creating web graphics:
1. Don't Sacrifice Speed For The Price Of Quality
Your main webpage should be under 40 KB in size for graphic
intensive pages. Since a graphic file usually downloads slower
than a normal text file (i.e. html page), you have to ensure
that your graphics are small, fast at loading and visually
appealing at the same time.
2. Graphics Should Be Appropriate, Not Just Look Good
One mistake a lot of web developers and Internet marketers make
is putting "cute" online graphics or photos on a website just
because they look good. This is a great technique if the images
are relevant, irrelevant image placement just creates slower
loading pages.
3. Don't Use Graphics When You Can Use Text
One logo, no matter how small, could take up to 5 seconds to
load on a website. While this may not seem like a great length
of time, it could mean the difference between losing an
impatient customer or getting the sale.
If your logos or graphics are based on simple fonts, then why
use a graphic when one line of HTML code can produce the same
text effect? And it'll take 1/100th of the time to load that one
line of HTML as opposed to the graphic.
You can also learn - quickly and easily - how to 'jazz up' your
own photos or images to add them to your site. For example, if
you just need to prepare your GIF or JPG images for the web by
compressing them so that they will load faster, check out the
free, ready-to-use "image cruncher" utilities at
http://computer-newbies.com/beveldevil/.
This software is really simple to use. It requires no knowledge
of computers and it has a fast learning curve.
This is just one example of the information that's available on
the web. With all the free and inexpensive online resources
available to budding web designers, there's no excuse not to
have a site that's jazzed up just the way you want it to be -
without having to get a university degree or spend six months
profit to do it.
About the author:
Rick Hunter has more tools for new graphic designers at his
website, http://computer-newbies.com/ezgraphics/
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