IMAGE

Top three take-away in order.

GIFs, not like the peanut butter brand Jiff.
Why all the riffraff? Why can’t images just be images? As I learned from the reading, different file types have different purposes. For example, GIFs are great for web design because they allow for one color to be transparent, which is a big deal if you want your website to look good (188). Who wants big white backgrounds in their images? Nobody. As I approach web-design, I want to know how to create quality images that aren’t cheesy looking—unintentional white backgrounds are just that. When in doubt, use a GIF.

Anti-alias
It’s actually the preferred choice for the author when it comes to graphics. There is no need to surrender anti-alias in order to get a smaller graphic: “there are other ways to reduce the file size that don’t compromise the quality of the image” (192). How does this snippet of knowledge help me with web-design? That’s easy, I didn’t know there was such a thing as anti-alias prior to the reading. That should say enough. If there is a way to maintain quality graphics while tweaking sizes, I want to know how to do it—anti-alias seems to be the answer.

JPEGs anyone?
Photographs, or anything that even slightly resembles—looks like, smells like, feels like, tastes like—a photograph should be saved as a jpeg (202). This is good to know! I hate to admit it, but in the past I always applied some arbitrary file name to an image, hoping that it didn’t really matter. Now I know it does. As I approach web-design in the future, I will know the proper way to save photograph-esque images.


Williams, Robin, and John Tollett. The Non-designer's Web Book: an Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, and Posting Your Own Web Site. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit, 2000. Print.