Using Graphics on the Web

Okay I see by my web stats that some of you are wondering what 'graphics' actually are. Well, graphics refer to images or photos —such as the photo of the laptop to the right of this text— which you can add your website to enhance its appearance . This section of Iron Spider deals with how to use HTML coding to properly add graphics to your web pages as well as how to align them, how to use them in hyperlinks and how to address some accessibility issues.

Best Free No/Low-hassle Stock Photo Sites

If you don't have any graphics to fiddle around with or if you're just looking for some free images to use on your website, here are —in my humble opinion— some of the best free stock photo websites on the net:

• MorgueFile — Completely hassle free. My personal favorite.
• FreeStockPhotos.biz — Another personal fave. Mostly hassle-free. (Carefully read the license agreement for each photo/image).
• PD Photo.org — Small one-man show providing a personal collection 100% hassle-free public domain photos. Excellent quality.
• Stock.XCHNG — Mostly hassle-free. This is another one of those read-the-fine-print-before-using stock photo sites but definitely worth the trouble.

These are all true free stock photo places. Beware of websites that claim to have a collection of public domain or copyright-free images but have disclaimers saying something to the effect that if you see an image on that site that violates a copyright, send them an email and they'll take it down. Run like the wind from websites like this. If you're intent on becoming a professional webmaster, sites like that will just waste your time.

Okay so now that you've got some graphics, let's get down to the brass tacks of it all. Here's the actual HTML code you use to add a graphic to your web page:

This is the bare essential code to get it all happening. You have only to replace graphic file name with the actual file name of your graphic and as long as the graphic file is in the same directory as your web page .html file, you're golden.

I go into much greater detail about all this on the following page:

How to Add Graphics to a Web Page

Other related pages in this section deal with...

Graphics and Accessibility

Here's where you'll learn how to make the HTML graphics code user-friendly including specifying alternate text in case the graphic can't be seen for some reason. You'll also learn how to specify dimensions (width and height) in order to speed up page loading and to adhere to web standards...

Alignment and White Space

This page will show you how to wrap text around a graphic on your web page like the way the text you are currently reading will eventually wrap around the photo of the computer mouse on the left and continue on the bottom. You can align the graphic to the left or right or you can set a default baseline for where the text rolls out (for example, from the vertical center of the graphic). This is all easily accomplished using the align attribute in your HTML <img> tag. I'll also show you how to adjust the spacing between the graphic and the text using some basic inline CSS code...

Page Color and Background

Here's how to add a background image to your web page as well as how to set it so that it stays still while the viewer scrolls down. Also covered is how to adjust the background color of your web page...

Using Graphics as Hyperlinks

Graphics can be actually set as hyperlinks which is immensely useful if you want to make some fancy-schmancy buttons for your website's menu. The problem with that however is search engines won't have a clear idea what the web page you're linking to through the graphic is about so it's better, whenever possible, to use text instead of images for hyperlinks on your web page. A better use of graphics as hyperlinks would be if you, say, wished to show a smaller thumbnail version of a photo but then have it so the viewer can click on the photo to display the full size image...

Horizontal Rules

This HTML code...

<hr>

...draws a nice divider on your web page called a 'horizontal rule' which can be customized in various ways by the HTML coding I provide on this page. However, if you're looking for some really fancy dividers, you should google "web page dividers"...

And finally, if you're looking for info on how to make check boxes or those radio button thingys for web page forms, that's a whole different ball of wax. Please see my page on how to make check boxes and radio buttons for more information on that.