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Image and video on your website
By Michael Baxter on 18 August 2011 with tags Tech
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Today's websites carry a mixture of content. This includes text, images, video and sound. Of this media, images and video require the most attention. Done correctly you can make your site fast to load and provide a rich experience for visitors. In this article we will cover off the techniques you can use to achieve this
Images
Pictures taken on today's digital cameras can be very large. Before using them on your website you should resize them to something appropriate for how they will be used. This means they will be faster to load and give best possible quality for how you want to use them.
Typically a small credit card sized image should be around 200 pixels wide. For larger images that you want to have appearing you can aim for 800 pixels wide.
Before uploading images to your website you can resize them using a variety of different software:
- Web Resizer - resizing images online
- Quick resize in Windows - uses "Power tools for Windows"
- Windows Live Essentials - gallery and other functions
- Gimp - free image editing software
Most modern website development software or Content Management Systems also allow you to resize the images online. Just remember that although the image may look small on the screen it could, behind the scenes, be very large. This is why it is important to size the images before putting them on your site.
Video
Video, like images, can also be very large. This requires fast internet connections and a lot of storage within your hosting environment. One solution is to use external video provides. With these you can upload your video, tag it with description information and links back to your website. The majority of the main video sites then allow you to embed the video into your website. This means the video appears within your site and visitors don't have to click away somewhere else. The following are the main providers in the market:
We recommend you read the online help from these providers so you can get the most from your uploaded video within your site.