Monday, March 9, 2009

10 Quick Tips for Making Your Large Graphics Load Faster (2)

6. Limit the Number of Graphics you Place on Each Page.
If your pages are loading too slowly, consider removing some of the images. Keep only those that absolutely necessary.

7. Use Thumbnails
Use a java script to display a thumbnail and load the larger image only when the reader rolls their mouse over the thumbnail. I use this technique when I have a lot of images I want to put on one page, but the page would be too big if I included them all at normal size.

I got this script from Dynamic Drive. As long as you keep their copyright notice in the html code you can use their scripts for free.

8. Browser Cache
Graphics and text are stored in what is called cache on your hard drive. This makes it easier and quicker to load files that are displayed in your browser. It loads them from the cache rather than over the net each and every time, if it is available.

To improve your visitors’ experience, take advantage of their browser cache. The best way to do this is by not putting identical images in more than one folder, subfolder or directory on your server. If the browser always calls the image from the same folder, it loads much quicker.

9. Optimize Your Images
Optimizing your images is a great way to reduce the load time. I generally optimize images I make for my clients to about 60%. I have found this to be the magic number that reduces the file to a reasonable size yet does not compromise the quality of the image.

I caution you on optimizing further. Greater percentages of optimization may leave your images blotchy with speckled blocks of color. It will often make your colors look washed-out and you may lose some of the fine details.

10. Progressive Optimization
A sneaky little trick I have learned is to select progressive settings when you are optimizing your images. This does not really make your images load faster; however, they do load first at a very low resolution and continue to load progressively, with more detail, until they are fully loaded.

Your visitor at least has something to view and content to read while the loading process finishes up. This technique works with JPG, JPEG, PNG and GIF 89 file types.

In Conclusion
As we progress into the Internet future there will come a time when our connection speeds are so fast the speed at which webpages load will not be an issue. News information and graphics will flash across your screen at record breaking speeds. We will get there. Maybe not in the next few years but eventually we will. History has already taught us that the technology is here. It is only a matter of time before we see it.

But until that happens how quickly our webpages load is something we need to take responsibility for.

Source From SitePro News

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