Re: Screen-sized Web Pages?

[Beth Mazur <mazur -at- MAYA -dot- COM>]

At 11:00 PM 12/2/96 +0200, Shmuel Ben-Artzi wrote:
>Most knowledgeable sources that I've run across on Web site design
>suggest creating JPG and interlaced GIF files to be read at 640x480x256.

I'm jumping into this discussion at mid-stream, so some of this may
be repetition, but there are two minor points.

First, generally the fewer colors you can make GIF images the better. They
will compress to smaller files, which translates to shorter download times.
Two good web image resources that I have found are:

   http://www.servtech.com/public/dougg/graphics/
   http://www.tiac.net/users/listen/inline.html

Second, the default window size for Netscape on some systems is under
500 pixels wide. As a result, many web sites are designed so that images
display well in that size. In fact, we had a client who complained that
the 512 pixel-wide image we created for their home page looked puny
on a 17" monitor. So I did a little survey and found that:

  The following sites have mastheads smaller than 512 pixels (these fit in
  the default Netscape window on the Mac): Apple, Stratus, Taligent, Xerox,
  Federal Express, Amdahl, NCR, and CBS.

  The following sites have mastheads approximately 512 pixels wide: Adobe,
  Intuit, AT&T, HP, Intel, Motorola, Bank of America.

  The following sites have mastheads about 10-15% larger than 512: Digital,
  Microsoft, Control Data, Novell, Disney, Coca-Cola.

[ This "survey" happened in March of '96, so some of this may have changed
since then. Plus, tables and frames are becoming more prevalent now that
Internet Explorer has entered the fray. ]

I do notice that I tend to use a browser window that is smaller than 600
pixels wide in order to keep text line length at a manageable level.
(This even though my monitor is 1024x768.)

Beth Mazur
MAYA Design Group
mazur -at- maya -dot- com