HTML images as discussed earlier, plays a very important role in attracting the web traffic towards your web site. Images are those elements of HTML documents, which add life to the web page and increase its worth. Images and other type of graphics can be used in a number of ways for different purposes but there are some important things, which should be considered before using them.
Why to use Graphics?
The first and foremost thing is to determine that why you should include graphics into your web page. Is there actually a need to use them? This is very important because images make the web sites heavy and it takes more time to load the web pages. Secondly, if you use too much of images then the user will get confused and the main subject matter of the document will get lost. Thus it should be well determined in advance that whether an image is required or not.
What type of graphics should be used?
If there is a scope for an image in the web site then a proper analyses regarding its design, color, size and position should be done. The size and the position of the image totally depend upon the type of content of the HTML document. The color, border style and the contrast too must be selected keeping in mind the background of the web site. The image should attract the viewer and it should give a soothing effect. If there is an ugly image with dark colors, then nobody will like to visit the web page.
Some important rules to be followed while using the images:
• Before using an image, check about its copyrights. One cannot use company logos, images, patented graphics etc.
• Never use any kind of offensive or pornographic images.
• Don’t use those images which make web pages heavy to load.
• Choose the right format for your image. If you want to use animation then .GIF is the best format to use otherwise if you want good resolution then go with JPEG/JPG.
• Images should be clear enough to view.
About Image size hints:
Size hints are used to explicitly define the height and width of the image. It has two main advantages:
1) If a user has disabled inline images in his browser the size hints for the image are not given, then instead of the image a small box will appear which will spoils all the formatting of the web page. If you give the size hints, then a blank box of the same size as of image will appear. This will preserve the formatting and appearance of the web page as it is.
2) Image size hints let the browser to display the formatted content/text quickly and download the image side by side. Thus, the user gets the main content even if the full image is not there and does not sits idle.
Size hints can be used by specifying HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes of <IMG> tag. For example:
<HTML>
<IMG SRC=”Content Mantra.jpg” WIDTH=”300” HEIGHT=”250”>
</HTML>