On images, especially in the Web context
How to use images in communication<br>in general and on the Web in particular
This document discusses how images should be used,<br>partly as regards to human<br>communication in general, but mainly as regards to publishing on<br>the World Wide Web.<br>The key questions here are why and what<br>rather than how.
Contents
Preface
Basic rules
"You can never use too many images"
"Images are progress"
People see images differently
Images - why?
Classification of images according to communicative purpose
On good and bad use of images
Structure first
Don't let decoration deteriorate communication
Concreteness
Size matters
Showing the structure
Where to put the images?
Should you care about imageless audience?
Images as menu items
The façade syndrom and the hypertext medicine
Preface
The word image in this context refers to any graphical<br>presentation such as a photograph, drawing, painting, or diagram.
Technical questions of implementing the use of images on the Web<br>are discussed in author's<br>Learning HTML 3.2<br>by Examples.<br>See also<br>section<br>Images<br>& icons<br>in<br>Style guide for online hypertext by<br>Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet.
Basic rules
The very basic principles of using images are the following:
An image shall express and communicate something which<br>cannot be presented in textual form or for which graphical<br>presentation is superior to textual.
Do not try to present too many things in an image.<br>For instance,<br>a graphic presentation of a system should display<br>at most seven<br>major parts of the system, leaving<br>their details to be presented separately.<br>An image shall be associated with related text, both in layout<br>and in contents.
"You can never use too many images"
A very large number of published documents contain text only.<br>They often look boring, and they are often written in obscure<br>language, using mile-long sentences and cryptic technical terms,<br>using one font only,<br>perhaps even without headings.<br>Such style, or lack of style, might be the one you are strongly<br>expected to follow when writing eg scientific or technical reports,<br>legal documents, or administrative papers.<br>It is natural to think<br>that such documents would benefit from a few illustrative images.<br>(However, just adding illustration might be rather useless, if<br>the text remains obscure and unstructured.)
It is too easy to go to the other extreme when trying to avoid<br>the boring plain text syndrome.<br>This is especially true on the Web, where it is relatively easy<br>technically to add illustration, for instance by picking images<br>from various existing collections. Many people seem to think that<br>you can't have too many images. If they can't find a suitable<br>image, they use an unsuitable one.
When people say that<br>one image tells more than a thousand words,<br>they tend to overlook the fact that what the image says might be<br>true or false,<br>relevant or off-topic,<br>useful or disturbing, constructive or tasteless.<br>(I won't bother to refute the saying by pointing out that there<br>are images which say nothing. However, I cannot resist the temptation<br>to remark that oddly enough the saying itself is expressed using words.)
"Images are progress"
Certainly the ability to use images is a huge improvement over<br>older forms of communication via computers. This does not imply<br>that any use of images is progress.
Publishing on the Web is very different<br>from older methods of publication,<br>and this has implications on the use of images, too.<br>In particular, an author should make his documents viewable<br>in a wide range of environments, without assuming that everyone<br>sees them the same way.
Often young, eager Web authors use a large amount of large images,<br>without even realizing that for other people to see them<br>they must be transmitted along communication lines. This may<br>involve a long chain of connections, some of which might be<br>rather slow. (Authors who make graphically intensive pages often<br>say that they make them for technologically advanced environments.<br>Probably they don't regard e.g.<br>new pocket-size devices with slow Internet<br>access as progress?)
There are situations where it makes sense to be<br>graphically intensive. But it is always wrong to be<br>graphics-intensive with no good reason.<br>For example, I do not mean that there should not be geographical<br>maps or collections of pictures of products on the Web. They may<br>certainly<br>have a message to<br>carry, a message which calls for graphics. On the other hand,<br>using images which contain just some text in some fancy font<br>is mostly stupid, especially if one doesn't even provide an ALT=<br>attribute. The same applies to picture galleries which are not<br>ordered in any way and are monolithic in the sense that you cannot<br>see a picture without waiting a very large amount of other pictures to load.
People see images differently
When discussing the use of images on the Web, the advocates of the<br>structuralist view often remark that people use different Web browsers,<br>and they use them...