MrDan

Fairly new at this, but gonna have a go at creating a home page in ps. Just unsure of size to work from that is the correct size in web browser. Understand a little on slicing it up and optimizing it so a little help appreciated a lot, and sorry if im being a little lazy here

sooty

Blinky2004

Hi sooty...

8x6 is the most common resolution these days. Which then means that the most compatible screen width you'd need to use would be 760px. Any more thatn that and you run a strong risk of producing a bottom scrollbar on your page.

Slicing is simpler than you may think.
Ctrl+R brings up the rules.
Guides can be dragged from the rulers into positions that subdivide your page content to create the desired design layout.
Then use the Slice tool to chop up the basic sections you created using the Guides.

It's easy to work with these things if you turn on VIEW/SNAP TO... and choose Guides/Slices/& Document Bounds.

If you have any other questions just ask. [righton]

Bacardi

Optimising then: talking PS, this means optimising jpg and gif.

jpg is for continuous tone images like photographs. It compresses your image file size (in kB) but it discards data. Blurry images (clouds,...) are better and more easily compressed than sharp transitions. A trick here is to blur the image a little, or to use PS' tools to blur what is not the centre of attention.

gif is for a limited range of colours like logo's. It has no problems with sharp transitions and offers the option of making one colour transparant.

"Save for web" is the place to go for both. Try it out, and ask when you're stuck.
Just don't forget that every byte has to be downloaded, and that many people have browsers that have a real download speed of some 4kB/sec. And that most people have some 15-20 seconds patience when browsing. So see that they get something as quick as possible. But not "loading...loading..." because that one reduces patience to some 5 secs.

MrDan

Thanks for all your help,given hopefully given time ill be able to give some back to the forum lots to learn yet !!!

sooty