Title: Fix My Website: Practical Graphics
Author: Stefene Russell
Article:
Despite my lousy eyesight, I’m a hopelessly visual person. When
I dink around with the site I co-edit with my friend Mary, I
scan large stacks of photos and pictures from old pamphlets, and
use them liberally. I admit it: I’m a graphics abuser, though
sometimes I can’t help myself.
This week, I stumbled on two separate articles (one online, one
in print) that reminded me lots of people turn off graphics when
they surf. I was humbled, and thought about going home to boot
some of those images off our site (I’ll get back to you on that
one). The point is this: if you’re aiming to get your site in
front of as many eyes as possible, you need to build your site
as if everyone on the planet was still pulling up pages with a
pokey 24k modem-or a Palm Pilot, for that matter.
*If they can’t see it-tell them what it is. You’ve probably run
your mouse over an image (perhaps you could see it, perhaps it
did not load) to see a yellow window pop up, with a descriptive
phrase inside, e.g., “Stuffed Quetl Bird, circa 1917.” If they
can’t see the pictures, tell them what’s there. You can do this
by adding a scrap of code into your image tag: alt=”Stuffed
Quetl Bird, circa 1917″
and insert it so: 
If you don’t like to mess
with HTML code, go to the help files for your particular HTML
editor and see how to insert this coding. *Text Links. Those who
cannot see your links cannot navigate your pages (or at the very
least, they’ll have a heck of a time). Search engines won’t be
able to detect a title or a phrase if it’s inside a GIF – after
all, it’s not a word, it’s a picture of a word. You don’t have
to do away with your cool buttons entirely, but be sure to add
text links at the bottom of the page. This is usually a good
idea anyway, images or no; orienting your user at every turn
assures that they won’t get lost.
*10,000 Calorie Graphics: Just Say No. Impatient Americans will
not wait half an hour for a big fat graphic to download. The
rest of the world pays for internet access by the hour, and
can’t afford to wait that long.
*The First Magic Number is 100
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