 Image Optimization
Reducing Load Time Through Image
Optimization
Even though more and more Internet users switch to
broadband every year, a large portion of the web's
population is still running on good old dialup connections.
It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation
when you're designing your website, and a major
consideration we have to make for dialup users is the
loading time of your website.
Generally, all the text on your
website will be loaded in a very short time even on a
dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is
mainly large images on your website, and it is very
important to strike a delicate balance between using just
enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the
overall loading time of your site.
You should also go to great
lengths to optimize every image on your site to make
sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really
mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary
information on your images, and thereby effectively
reducing the file size of your image without affecting its
appearance.
If you own Photoshop, it will
be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG
file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the
"quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to
10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your
image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not
have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors
online that you can download and use to reduce your image's
file size.
On the other hand, you can opt
to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality
at the least file size. You can also save your images in
GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the
color information not used in your image, hence giving you
the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF
format will often compromise the appearance of your image,
so make your choice wisely!
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