3. Advanced Techniques
Consider your viewer's display size - typically 640 x 480 pixels. Build your pages to be viewed within this area. A good range is 500 to 600 pixels wide.
During the design stage take a screen shot of your browser of choice while it's open at an optimum size. Place the screen shot in PageMaker or QuarkXpress and design on top of the window area. You can also do this in Photoshop if you wish. This way you can see exactly how your pages will look in the browser.
A program like DeBabbelizer or PROGIF will help to reduce the bit depth of images (while retaining quality) for GIF files.
Keep in mind that the browser color palette is only 216 predetermined colors. And many people are not viewing your site with a 24-bit monitor. Use this palette as a guide to text and solid art colors.
See http://www.onr.com/user/lights/netcol.html for more info.Keep image files as small as possible, under 35K.
PCs tend to have a much darker gamma than Macs: 2.2 compared to 1.8. This means if your image looks good on a Mac, it will be too dark on a PC. Be sure to adjust for this.
Client-side image maps are much faster and more efficient than server-side counterparts. Most browser support them as well. Use both in your HTML file to cover all bases.
JAVA, shockwave and CGIs can enhance your site, but be sure to use them properly: they can also be a big memory hog!
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