Smarter images for the web

Customers often insist on maintaining (part of) their own web sites, and with good reason. They are often perfectly capable to do so. However, some of the things even the amateur web designer takes for granted are completely opaque to people for whom a web page is just an extension of the Powerpoint presentation.

Take images. Apart from legal and aesthetic problems, there are simple logistical problems involved with web images. For instance, you have to give them names that keep working across networks and operating systems. Whoever would have thought that there are operating systems who refuse to load a file called ‘bullet.gif’ if it was referenced in the web page’s code as ‘Bullet.GIF’? It works on Windows, why not elsewhere?!

I wrote a small article on such problems and how to avoid them: “Some guidelines for creating and storing web images”. The article lists the things I remembered my customers stumbling over. Did I forget any major pitfalls? Mention them in the comments.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2004 at 12:41 am and is filed under Web design + usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.