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| There
are two categories of art on the web: Foreground
Art and Background Art. Facts:
Carpenters measure in inches, Printers in points
and picas, Web Designers in pixels. Pixel
display will depend on the resolution of the
recipient's monitor not yours. Average |
Public Screen
size is 14" monitor, Average screen
resolution is 640 x 480 pixels. Organizations that use
the web have larger screens and finer
resolution. Believe it or not, the most common
windows operating system is Windows 3.1. Keep in
mind what demographic your art and message is
being received when creating. Email has less
pixel dimensions. |
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| Foreground
Art: 1. is a single image that may be
animated (normally a gif file) and can be
combined with other images to create the
illusion that it is one. 2. Mouse Over
techniques will swap the image with another and
is not by definition, animated, rather two
distinct separated files that is mechanically
switched for effect. Can be used in your
Email Stationary. |
Background
Art is a single image that is
normally tiled or repeated to give the illusion
of texture. Doing so speeds the recipients
download time and drawing of the page.
Occasionally, you will find that the background
is one large picture normally faded or watermark
affect. I've also seen animated gifs tiled in
the background, but visually it created such a
distraction that it was hard to read the
message. Can be used in your Email
Stationary. |
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Copy
Foreground Art on the Web
In
this case we found a button we wanted to
copy. Put cursor on the red button
"Computer 101" and right mouse
click to get the menu previewed on the
right. Select "Save Picture
As..." |
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Dialog
box will tell you what type of a file it
is. In this case it is a gif file and the
name given is "btnComputer101".
Note:
The "Save" dialog box will open
to the last save folder. If no previous
save, the default folder to save is
"My Documents" folder.
Change
it to a name that is meaningful to you and
save it in the folder you created to hold
downloaded art. |
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| Image
size of "btnComputer101" 94
pixels wide and 30 pixels high with 1.14
Kbytes of memory |
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Copy
Background Art on the Web
In
this case we found leaves we wanted to
copy. We noticed that text and drop down
boxes were riding over the top of image
and it was continuous. Must be a
background. Put cursor only on the leaves
and right mouse click to get the menu
previewed on the right. Select "Save
Background As...". Also proves that
it is the background with this menu
showing. |
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Dialog
box will tell you what type of a file it
is. In this case it is a gif file and the
name given is "Leaves On the
Side".
Change
it to a name that is meaningful to you and
save it in the folder you created to hold
downloaded Background Art. |
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| Image
size of Leaves on the side 1200 pixels wide and
124 pixels high with 10.3 Kbytes of memory |
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I
made the image wider by adding more white
space to accommodate larger screens as I
wanted the leaves to be limited to the
side and
not be repeated in other parts of
the screen. |
With
special coding and used with Internet
Explorer, (Netscape may not support) you can specify vertical
tiling only, which would reduce the size
of the file but 10.3 K is not bad and is
easy for the novice to install. |
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| How
do you get the size of the file? In Windows
Explorer, select the file you want, hold the
"Alt" key down and press
"Enter" key or right mouse select,
menu select "Properties". The information
is in the form that appears When
opened in a paint program, the program will tell you what size the image is in pixel
dimensions by selecting menu "Images",
select "Attributes". |
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| You
are now ready to copy something. Create
the folder for the download, open the web and
copy and save the first small picture you
see. Seek out a page with a background
image usually a textured page, copy and save in
the same folder. Open MS Paint if you don't have
another paint program and open the files you
saved to see what you got. |