Graphic Utilities

This chapter reviews a few HTML graphic utilities.

You will inevitably want to incorporate graphics into your HTML documents. While just about any graphics program will suffice for the creation of your graphic files, you will have to modify them for the WWW medium. First, you will probably want to save them as (or convert them to) GIF images since all graphical browsers support this format inline. Another thing you may want to do is make sure your images are transparent. This removes the "blockyness" of some of your pages. Clip2gif is a great utility for both of these functions. Transparency works well for the second. Finally, if you want to incorporate QuickTime movies into the files you deliver, then you will want to use FlattenMooV so your files get delivered correctly.

One final note, it is generally not a good idea to incorporate too many graphics into your pages. Many people will be accessing your server through relatively slow modem connections. Transferring images takes a long time. Make sure the wait your reader's have to bear is worth it. Furthermore, some of your readership may have their graphics turned off or they may be using a text-only browser. Consequently, make sure your graphics "add value" to your documents, otherwise you will simple annoy your readership.

1. clip2gif
2. FlattenMooV
3. Transparency

See Also

1. "Computers:World Wide Web: HTML Editors:Macintosh" <URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers/World_Wide_Web/HTML_Editors/Macintosh/>

2. "Macintosh WWW Development Resources" <URL:http://www.uwtc.washington.edu/Computing/WWW/Macintosh.html>

3. Chuck Shotton, "How to serve QuickTime movies" - Serving QuickTime movies from a Mac running MacHTTP is really no different than serving any other binary document (such as GIF or JPEG files) with one exception. The movie data must be in a proper, flattened format. <URL:http://www.biap.com/machttp/howto_qt.html>

4. Daniel W. Connolly, Bruno Girschweiler, and Tim Berners-Lee, "Graphics formats for WWW" - "The World-Wide web is a multimedia information space. This means that one of the design issues is dealing with various data formats. In addition to HTML and other textual formats, since the widespread availability of NCSA Mosaic and other visual interfaces to the web, more and more of the web's information is represented or augmented with data in any number of popular graphics formats." <URL:http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Graphics/Overview.html>

5. Robert Lentz, "Macintosh Web Programs and Utilties" <URL:http://www.astro.nwu.edu/lentz/mac/net/mac-web.html>

6. Yahoo, "Computers: World Wide Web: HTML Editors:Macintosh" <URL:http://www.yahoo.com/Computers/World_Wide_Web/HTML_Editors/Macintosh/>

Eric last edited this page on September 26, 1995. Please feel free to send comments.