Re: BITMAPS

[Scott McClare <smcclare -at- DY4 -dot- COM>]

-----Original Message-----
From:   Marilynne Smith [SMTP:marilyns -at- QUALCOMM -dot- COM]
Sent:   Thursday, October 29, 1998 3:34 PM
To:     TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject:        Re: BITMAPS

>If you insist on using bitmaps, be sure to define your image size
(height
>and width) in your HTML code.  Unless you define the size of the image,
it
>will print different sizes on different browsers.  Your readers will
not
>like the result.  Defining the height and width will also help your
graphic
>to load faster.

In my experience, the opposite is true; that is, if you *don't* specify
the image size, it always displays full-size on the screen - a 100x100
image will always take up 100x100 pixels on the display.

Either way, however, the purpose of the width and height attributes in
HTML is to tell the browser how big the image is.   Specifying, for
example,

     <IMG SRC="foo.gif" WIDTH=100 HEIGHT=100 ALT="Alternative text">

tells the browser to "reserve" 100x100 pixels for foo.gif when laying
out the Web page.  OTOH, WIDTH and HEIGHT are *not* for mandating an
image size.  Using these attributes to render large graphics as
thumbnails is a bad idea, for the following reasons:

     * it's cheating (some browsers will render the graphics at
       your specified size, but it's still illegal HTML)
     * it looks horrible, because rather than resampling the image
       when it rescales it, the browser only throws out "extra"
       pixels
     * the browser still has to load a big graphic

Spend some time with your favourite graphics tools to create some proper
thumbnails instead.

Take care,

Scott

--
Scott McClare - Technical Writer
DY 4 Systems Inc.
(613) 599-9199 x502 smcclare -at- dy4 -dot- com
Opinions are my own

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