Your pictures and the web
| Topic: Your
pictures and the web |
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Read
along below the picture while the picture loads
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In addition
to being too dark, this picture is too large for use on a web site.
This image is 234,138 bytes in size (sorry for the computer lingo
but this is an important concept to get if you are going to place
images on your web pages or email them to friends). Think of a byte
as a character. Pretend you are going to create a letter to a friend
and that in that letter, you type the first letter of your first
name 234,138 times. That's 234,138 characters or "bytes"!.
Now here is the problem. Your modem can only transfer data to and
from your computer at a specific speed. You have seen modem speed
ratings like 14K, 28K, or 56K perhaps. The rule of thumb is that you
multiply the number by 100 and that's the number of bytes the modem
can transfer per second from the Internet to your computer. So if
you have a 14K modem, it will take you about 167 seconds, or almost
three minutes to load this picture. A 28K modem will do it in about
83 seconds, or just over a minute. Most people will not wait around
more than a few seconds for a web page to load so we have to find a
way to reduce the size of this picture dramatically. Fortunately,
there are things you can do that will reduce the size of this image
by 10 times or more and reduce the loading time to under 10 seconds.
Two primary factors contribute to this large size. First, is
physically large - 580 pixels wide by 435 pixels high (that is about
8 X 6 inches printed size). That will take up most of the screen on
almost everyone's computer screen. But it is too large in another
important, but invisible way. It has been saved and loaded on this
web page as a high resolution (high quality) picture. We
will show you how to deal with both of these issues on the web pages
that follow. But first, press this right arrow to see our finished
version of this picture, a picture that is only 23,558 bytes in
size. |
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