Graphics. Call them what you like, clip-art, artistic interpretations, cartoons, buttons, nav-bars, GIF's JPG's, BMP's, it all means the same - pretty pictures!

So what about them? Well, just about every website uses them, some more than others. There are pros and cons to using graphics, it can establish a theme or a mood for your site. They can also drown out the message you are trying to make!

Excessive use of graphics - no matter what form they are in - can, and frequently slow down the speed with which you site loads.

A lot of website designers subscribe to the maxim that 'a picture speaks a thousands words'. If you were writing an article for the Sunday Magazines this would be true. On a website? I am not so sure.

Paradoxically, a website full of words can have the opposite effect - boring.

So what's the answer? A careful balance without gratuitous use of graphics - that's what! Let's use a graphic for no particular reason other than to break up my ramblings.

Chances are you looked at the graphic before you read the last part of the last sentence. The fact is you probably looked at the helicopter before you began to read the paragraph! This is fine if the helicopter meant something to the theme of this page. But it didn't - did it?

Don't get me wrong, I'm as guilty as the next guy for using graphics, especially animated one! But they all have the effect of slowing load time, and in this day and age of 10 second attention span for the average 'surfer', this can be disasterous. Tactical Panda doesn't build 'flash' sites for this very reason. We build fast loading sites with the minimum use of graphics and banners, buttons and rollover images.

Let's take an few examples. If you use the average 'e.mail me' text (let's use my own as an example) tacticalpanda.websites@virgin.net it looks pretty dull doesn't it? Let's add a graphic or two to do the same job.

 or this one - 

Be honest, which of the three do you prefer? Don't bother, I can guess! This is fine if you were to keep graphics to the minimum, and they actually do something!

Here's an example of an excellent graphic that does nothing.  So why use it? The only reason is because it's colourful and well designed. Does it actually add anything to your website? I doubt it. But don't let that stop you using it! The problem comes when you use large, colourful graphics, especially encased in a table (which as you know generally are amongst the last things to fully load).

I have put this cat on this page so you can have a look at an example of a brilliantly drawn graphic. The most excellent designer, Shawn of Shawn's Clipart, demonstrates on his websites what can be done with imagination and a really good graphics programme! Used with care this sort of graphic would grace the pages of the best websites.

The point I am trying to make is if you were to overdo it with 20 cats on 20 computers, then your load time would suffer!

Have you ever been on a graphics / clipart website and noticed how they generally put only a handful of graphics on one page?

There are two reasons for this:

• It keeps the loading time to a minimum, and
• It makes you surf their site! (Both are fair comments!)

There are of course other factors to slow loading pages, not least of which is the background. You may have noticed that I use white or off-white pages wherever possible. Graphic rich and colourful backgrounds can slow down a page considerably, especially when you bear in mind that the 'average surfer' (whatever that is!) doesn't have an ISDN line, probably a 28.8 or 33.6Kbps modem, so load times are maybe not as fast as yours!

Anyway, enough about loading times, I guess you have the picture (excuse the pun!). On the next page we will look at the different types of graphics, the ones I prefer, and why.