Graphics Interchange Format
Often, we tend to minimize the importance of images in the overall design of the site. Or think of them, we do from an aesthetic standpoint. But the images are one of the most important components of a page. In fact, the images are what gives weight to the site, in terms of size of the file occupies, measured in kilobytes or megbytes, because what weighs the code, ie the logical structure of the site is negligible. Consequently, the images that we include in our design are crucial to determining the load times.
The three formats are universally accepted: gif, jpeg, and png. Other formats such as bmp or tiff were quickly discarded because of its excessive weight final. As shown, values are relative to the resolution, ie the number of color dots per inch, but as shown is a plot of 500 pixels by 375 pixels, PNG format weighs 361 kb. The same file in gif format 54.21 kb-weighs six times less-and in jpeg format 69.03 kb (barely a little more than gif format) GIF images are named after the first letters of its original name: Graphics Interchange Format. The format was created by a company called CompuServe back in 1987 (Compuserve, for the curious, was the first major Internet service provider in the eighties). The idea was to create a format that reduces the size of graphics files, which were hitherto bmp (or bitmaps-hence its name-or bitmaps), but without sacrificing many colors or image quality. Gif format pictures were becoming more compressed than bmp on, resulting in a smaller size, equal benefits.
Achieving such a reduction was imposed at a time when most users with little connection available bandwidth, based on telephone modems, which did not exceed 54 kilobytes per second. Another advantage is that files can make gifs animated graphics. Nothing spectacular, do not think will achieve a graphic film with a png, but you can achieve small animations. A clear example are the emoticons, those small little icons that say hello, or wink. With their limitations, are an interesting possibility to achieve movement on a site. We will see in what case to apply each format, and what comparative advantages they have. We continue with the explanations in the second part of this article. If you liked this post and wants to put in place, you can smoothly, provided you cite as a source
