When the Internet was first created it was used as a medium to transfer simple text. In this way, people could exchange information, but only in written form. As computer languages matured and techniques became available to send images over the Internet things started to get exciting.
Just as the Windows operating system, a graphical user interface (GUI), made computers much more accessible to people who were unfamiliar with DOS, a text-command based operating system, graphics opened up the Web to people bored with simple text transactions. Sending images with text made the Web a much more entertaining and powerful medium.
Two Graphic File Formats dominate the Web right now. The GIF and JPEG are widely used and accepted because they offer high quality along with a small file size. In other words, they look good and you can download them relatively quickly!
GIF: Graphics Interchange Format are images of 256 colors or less. Because you are loading less colors GIF files are usually small and a quicker download than JPEG files.
JPEG: Joint Photographic Export Group format are images that contain more than 256 colors and are an ideal choice for photographs because of their high image quality.
You will most likely use a combination of GIF and JPEG files when you are constructing your Web sites in Web Studio. Several other graphic file formats exist and one of the great strengths of Web Studio is that is allows you to use all of them, taking care of the conversion process for you.
BMP, TGA, PCX, EPS, WMF, RAS and PNG formats are all supported by Web Studio. Web Studio will automatically convert these into GIFs when it builds your Web site. It will not convert the original source, the file on your hard drive, only the copy used to make the Web site.
The biggest concerns you will have as a Web site designer when it comes to graphics is the time it takes to download them. The reason JPEG and GIF are the darlings of the Internet world is that they download faster than the others. If you place too many graphics on your Web page it will cause the page to download very slowly. If someone grows impatient because your Web page is taking 2 minutes to download they may click the back button and not come back! The reason it takes so long to download the graphic is a combination of three things: the amount of traffic on the Internet, the speed of the visitor's modem and the limitations of the current phone line system.
Internet traffic: We have all heard the phrase World Wide Wait to describe the Web. And it's true; with each passing holiday season, more and more people are on the Web. Big numbers of participants can wreak havoc with digital traffic as well as commuter traffic. Often times surfing the Net during off-peak hours will solve this.
Modem speed: This is the one variable that you as a consumer have some control over. The modem is the piece of hardware that is in charge of interpreting the digital signals from the Web into computer language. Modem speeds are always increasing as the demand for faster connections increase. The standard speed right now (as of press time) is 56 kbs. Of course, this will change rapidly.
Wire size: This is a bit more complex. And this is where bandwidth comes into play. Phone lines were not originally designed to carry the information that they now carry as a result of the Internet's growing popularity. The Phone Company has plans to upgrade these lines but that will take some time. Many local Cable companies are filling this gap in the meantime, offering big, fast connections to selected areas of the country. These connections can be expensive, however.
So, when you design your Web site, spread the graphics out amongst several pages as opposed to making one page your photo album. This would probably result in an extremely slow photo album.