Graphic Information

Color Scheme’s

• Business Sites almost always have a white background.
• Use color wisely.
• Don't use colored, textured, or graphic backgrounds unless absolutely necessary.
• Colored text against a colored bkg is difficult for the vision impaired.
• Limit the number of colors used on the site.

General Rules of Thumb

1. Avoid gratuitous graphics, they should add to the content of the page.
2. Do not use graphics if text will suffice.
3. Reuse the same graphic on multiple pages whenever possible.
4. Limit the size and number of graphics.
5. Do not substitute bullets and horizontal rules with images. ~Eats bandwidth and confuses the user.
6. Always use the "Alt" attribute.~Searchbot food and often displays while image downloads.
7. Do not use large images, they waste real estate.
8. As small a display dimension as possible.
9. As compact file size as possible.
10. Crop and resize images to relevant features.

General Tips

• Graphics should have descriptive names. (logo_small.gif)
• Background images probably will not print.
• Funky fonts can be made into images (use sparingly)
• Precision type and info can be blocked into Gif’s
• Use a small colored GIF (5x5 pixelsish) as a background tile instead of bkg color.
• Be very careful in using graphic elements as controls (buttons, links, etc)
• Do not put high quality images against a bkg that is textured or clown pantsy.
• Don't use a funky format. As of Jan 2003, GIF and JPEG formats are all you have for sure.

Galleries

• Keep thumbnails at a consistant dim
• If you just link to the image file, it ends up in the upper left corner of a browser window, all by itself.
• Put focal point images on their own pages
• Use an HTML page to hold the image. Code will let you center the picture, put in a page title, and add other information.
• Reserve features such as zoomable or rotatable photos for the secondary pages.
• A primary product page must be fast and should be limited to thumbnail shots.