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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 very
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 a greater length and 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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