Slicing and Dicing an Image to Create a Website

One process many clients don't understand is 'slicing and dicing'. When we first create a client's unique web template, the banner, side menu, etc., this is done as an image. In most cases it is not possible just to stick up and banner and have a background color with a light inner table, except with certain sales pages or ezine templates, for example.

Why Slice and Dice to Create a Website?

The shortest and simplest answer is the smaller the file size of the images used in a web page, the faster the page will display. This in itself is a good enough reason.

Website visitors traditionally have a very short patience span. Broadband's steady proliferation has not changed this. If anything, visitor expectations is now that pages should load instantaneously. At rate, the longer they have to wait for a page to display, the more likely it is you will lose them before they have viewed your offerings.

So how does slicing and dicing produce faster page display?

Have you ever seen a page with central table with shadows to make the table appear as if it were floating on a layer above the page? Here is an example using a site we developed: http://www.iaccweb.org/ . The left and right edges of the central table are tiny tiled vertically to produce the effect of a solid graphic. The slice is a very small file size, so takes much less time to display than if we had used a side graphic big enough to fill the required area. This brings up another reason - why we slice and dice images.

Read more of this article here: http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/tips-and-articles.html#Dice

Jan