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Images can enhance your site with color and human interest and give it impact that text cannot. Visitors with no time to read your site may judge it on the size, placement, choice of images and above all the time it takes the images to load. The load time is especially important for websites.
Gone are the days of home pages dominated by ponderous image maps the full-screen representational graphics implanted with links to the rest of the site.
In their place are sites overloaded with graphics, but the effect is the same at least in terms of page-load time. If the "weight" of a page on your site the cumulative file size of the images and HTML exceeds about 40 or 50 kilobytes, the page will load too slowly and the impact of your well-chosen graphics will be lost.
There are two ways to put pages on a diet. The first way is to use image editing software like Photoshop or Fireworks to optimize the graphics to the smallest reasonable file size as measured in bytes or kilobytes. When you're deciding how far to go when optimizing, remember that users may not notice a loss of fidelity if the page loads quickly.
Another way to trim down your pages is to use fewer images more effectively or create composite images to present a theme or idea of many separate images. Remember: Sometimes less is more.
Finally, a warning about using stock photography: With so many sources of free photography available of the Web, there are some very familiar images and themes floating around out there.
Typefaces
Typefaces and fonts play an important role in your site's design by establishing hierarchy on pages. You want to use a large font for headlines and subheads, a medium-sized font for the main text on your pages, and a small font for things like your page footer, credits, and copyright notice.
But don't mistake hierarchy for variety. As with the well-known rule of print design, the fewer font families you use in your website design, the better. In fact, using one or two families not counting the one you use in your logo is sufficient.
Print guidelines often recommend serif typefaces the ones with little embellished curves on their ends for body copy, but the bulk of your website copy should be set in a sans-serif typeface. The low resolution of computer monitors renders serif fonts more poorly than sans-serif faces. Of the many sans-serif choices, an online legibility study a few years back deemed Verdana the most readable though fonts like Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS are worthy alternatives.
Bear in mind, however, that you have limited control over the typefaces used to render your page in a user's browser. Their browser may not have your preferred font installed, or they may have configured their browser to override the fonts and styles of every web page, substituting their favorite font instead.
Action Steps
1. Use image editing software like Photoshop or Fireworks to optimize the graphics to the smallest reasonable file size.
2. Use fewer images more effectively or create composite images to present a theme or idea of many separate images.
3. Use a large font for headlines and subheads, a medium-sized font for the main text on your pages, and a small font for things like your page footer, credits, and copyright notice.
Important Points
- Images can enhance your site with color and human interest and give it impact that text cannot.
- Typefaces and fonts play an important role in your site's design by establishing hierarchy on pages.
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