Picture size

[Jim S]

Not strictly an HTML question, but what is the accepted size of graphics on
a website? I have kept mine to a maximum of 610 x 400 px knowing that some
people will still view on 800 x 600 screens with all manner of toolbars.
However they look better when bigger.
I am tempted to go bigger for those of us on 1024 x 768 or more.
Is there an accepted convention for this or does everyone do their own
thing?

 

[Paul]

Not strictly an HTML question, but what is the accepted size of graphics
on
a website? I have kept mine to a maximum of 610 x 400 px knowing that some
people will still view on 800 x 600 screens with all manner of toolbars.
However they look better when bigger.
I am tempted to go bigger for those of us on 1024 x 768 or more.
Is there an accepted convention for this or does everyone do their own
thing?

In my website I have choosen having thumbs 250 or 350 px large, and "great"
images 800 px large.
The important thing is their "weight" to reduce downloading time. I have
optimized it in no more than about 10 KB and about 70KB each.
Using these values, download speed is rather high.
Many times it is necessary compressing images with a minimun loss of
quality. To do this I use ACDSee image viewer, that has this capability.
Paul

 

[mbstevens]

Not strictly an HTML question, but what is the accepted size of graphics on
a website? I have kept mine to a maximum of 610 x 400 px knowing that some
people will still view on 800 x 600 screens with all manner of toolbars.
However they look better when bigger.
I am tempted to go bigger for those of us on 1024 x 768 or more.
Is there an accepted convention for this or does everyone do their own
thing?

You can use thumbnail image links
that use actually tiny images (as opposed to displaying
the full sized images small) and allow the visitor
to choose only images wanted by clicking through.
But you are stuck with choosing the size of the eventual
enlargement for the visitor.

For really big enlargements I would
show a tiny image associated with several standard links to
different sized enlargements. Each link should suggest
the size of the enlargement in its text. The visitor can
choose which size to use.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Not strictly an HTML question, but what is the accepted size of graphics on
a website?

"Big enough to be useful." There's no longer any need to constrain
photograph images size-wise solely for technical reasons. If you need
it 800px wide to see it, then use 800px width. Don't think that
"bandwidth" requires everything to be down-sized to under 200px, just
to control download times.

If you want thumbnails for a gallery, consider 200px width and four or
five across the screen, rather than an old approach of 100px or less.
Now you can at least see what the things are!

Certainly abandon <table> for a thumbnail gallery in favour of floated
<div> around each image/caption group. This permits big thumbnails on
small screens, and if the screen width doesn't permit many across the
screen, then it re-flows them to put fewer on each row.

All users' displays (for practical values of "all") are between 1000
and 2000 px wide. The few smaller than this can cope with some
sideways scrolling and a competent fluid design. Anything bigger than
this is either wall-mounted rather than a desktop, or is on multiple
screens. Either of these require different thinking from the single-
screen at arms' length model.

Phones are easy. Their networks will transcode images on the fly.

The remaining awkward clients are palmtops (my Nokia 770) etc. These
are around 600x200 in size and don't generally connect through a
transcoding network proxy. OTOH, I don't _expect_ this sort of ultra-
portable device to be convenient to use for huge images. However one
of my main uses for it is viewing >1000px-wide images (references on
silver hallmarks or signatures, from within auction and sale rooms),
so don't rule this out completely! Sometimes awkward scrolling is the
right behaviour, better than preventing access altogether.

A very good approach (requiring significant effort though) is that
used by wikipedia, wikicommons and mediawiki for handling images.
They're uploaded in any size up to "vast" (look at the Torre del
Acqua, Barcelona photo on Wikicommons) and the site publishing engine
re-sizes them as necessary. The size served depends on the context, so
a "thumb" or a "gallery" image on an article page is automatically
smaller than the image's own page. The size for each of these contexts
is also defaulted to a user-specific setting, which is adjustable for
large or small preferences.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:50:30
GMT Jim S scribed:

Not strictly an HTML question, but what is the accepted size of
graphics on a website? I have kept mine to a maximum of 610 x 400 px
knowing that some people will still view on 800 x 600 screens with all
manner of toolbars. However they look better when bigger.
I am tempted to go bigger for those of us on 1024 x 768 or more.
Is there an accepted convention for this or does everyone do their own
thing?

Most mod browsers can be set to adjust displayed image size to fit the
viewport. Thumbnails should be big enough to see at higher resolutions and
small enough in filesize to download quickly. There is no hard-and-fast
"rule" per se, but if you lack common sense you will commonly have trouble.