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Author: Stephen Brennan
A very well known and apt adage for many circumstances, but today I'm not going to talk about the virtues of a picture in it's ability to replace words or describe more effectively. Today, I want to use this space to help those unfamiliar with the ways in which we can make images work for us on the Internet,
Unfortunately, for the lack of a bit of knowledge, many webmasters, the uninitiated and some of the relatively experienced, are using images in such a way as to disadvantage themselves and their websites. The most common problem I see is images that are way to big (and I don't mean physical size), which only serves to slow their website's loading time. I've noticed there are a number of webmasters who either aren't aware of the fact that a website is no place for a bitmap image (.bmp) or they don't know how to convert it to a more friendly file.
Firstly, we have to establish the major file types (or file 'extensions') that are used on websites. These are, as I just mentioned, bitmap (.bmp), which is a MS Windows® format, jpeg (.jpg), gif (.gif) and to a lesser degree png (.png). These initials all have meanings, for instance 'png' stands for 'Portable Network Graphics' but it's really of no consequence to name them all.
As I said, except in a very few circumstances, bitmap images have no place on a website, simply because of the size of the file needed to carry them. They certainly have their uses but this isn't generally a recommended use because they can slow the loading speed (the time it takes for a web page to appear on a user's screen) to a virtual ( Next Page )
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