[thelist] Retro 90s webdesign - speeding up large image downloads

[aardvark]

On 7 Jun 2005 at 21:13, VOLKAN ™Z€EL K wrote:

> > Fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be) I've never done
> > image-based development. So, I've got about 113k page of images and I'm
> > preloading some of them in a javascript. Are there any other techniques
> > for minimizing large image downloads?
[...] 
> I don't have any other technique in my repository wrt image download
> time optimization.

know your image formats...

for example, .gif images compress using Run-Length Encoding, which 
basically means rows, not columns, are looked at when compressing the 
image... as such, a gradient going top-to-bottom will likely compress 
better than a gradient going left-to-right...

but i'd avoid gradients...

also, see if you can make use of tiling background images with shim 
images to hold the gaps open... colored backgrounds can aid this...

for example, a chrome bar (how's that for 90s?) can be a bg image, 
but the curvy end of it can be the shim image that holds the table 
cell open and closes it off nicely...

this way your chrome effect can be small, but with tiling it can be 
large in scope...

if you do use tiling, i'd recommend no images smaller than 20px on a 
side... my experience is that tiling tiny images hundreds/thousands 
of times can take longer to render and result in slower response 
times during use on slower machines than a larger images that tiles 
much less...