Monday, January 02, 2006
Text files are much more efficient for computers to store and transmit across the network than graphics files. Why? Text is very tightly coded; you can fill a typical Web page with solid text using about 1,500 characters, which can be represented in 1,500 bytes, or 1.5KB, of space. Graphics, on the other hand, require a lot of storage. An uncompressed full-page, full-color image takes up about 1.5MB of space -- roughly 1,000 times more space.
In order to transmit quickly, the best Web graphics are small in size and then compressed even further -- mainly by using fewer colors. Graphics packages such as Adobe Photoshop allow you to save images in a compressed format, with a smaller number of colors used to convey almost all the original image. That's why some Web images are too small and have jaggy edges.
In order to transmit quickly, the best Web graphics are small in size and then compressed even further -- mainly by using fewer colors. Graphics packages such as Adobe Photoshop allow you to save images in a compressed format, with a smaller number of colors used to convey almost all the original image. That's why some Web images are too small and have jaggy edges.
