Its all in the image

Images are used on pretty much every internet site. But what format should you use?
As a general rule, large block colors such as logos, buttons, etc should be in gif format. Most banners are done in gif too to make them animated.

Jpg's should be used for detailed images like photos. If you want to get your images looking the best though you might want to try both.

Apart from these files, all oter formats should be avoided as they are too large and now always supported by web site editors, etc. Gifs can also be animated which is always a bonus.

The only other format you may want to consider, to replace animated gifs are Flash files (.swf). You don't have to sheel out £500 for Flash neither as you can get Coffeecup Firestarter as freeware which will create basic flash files.

Another point I've found out about other image types is that their color is different. If you create an image in Fireworks (png) and insert it into yout webpage, with the same color as your page, there will be differences between your image and the page background. But once you export your image as a gif, the colors match. This isn't a problem with colors such as white, ovbviously but be aware of it. You can get the same problem with flash movies too!

A final point to remember. Resizing the image in a web editor doesn't make the image file smaller! You need to do this in your image editor.