yahoo! masthead

gwlubin · 03-11-1999, 04:02 PM

earlier today, i was taking a gander at yahoo and twiddling my thumbs. i noticed that the graphic at the top of the yahoo page though big in size is small in bytes.

using my favourite compression toy, i tried to compress a similar size gif down to a similar number of bytes and found that i could get anywhere near it.

how do they do that?

*Dean B* · 03-11-1999, 04:19 PM

You know Yahoo get an average 95 million hits a day; that's around 1,000 per sec.

Now that would keep Andrew busy eh ?

Dean.
Vizbook - www.dmcity.com/vizbook/vizbook.htm

[This message has been edited by Dean B (edited 03-11-99).]

Bi4Be · 03-11-1999, 04:32 PM

gwlubin, I have always wondered the same thing! Just not about Yahoo's masthead, but these animated ads that have oodles and oodles of frames in them!

(I am not talking about "looping" the frames)
It makes me mad, too! If I create one and try compressing it I don't even come close to their file size! grrr.....

So can anyone show some light on this matter? Or is it that they have money to pay 100% pro's to make there banners at a mere couple thousand dollars... (which, by the way, I have heard of)

-Bi4Be

Justin · 03-11-1999, 04:49 PM

I'm no graphics expert, not by a long shot, but I do know that if you choose your colors carefully and use a low-color palette, you can make a relatively small graphic that is small is bytes.

One tip is that if you use any gradients or dithering, the resulting file size is going to be larger, even using the same color palette. Example:

997 bytes

243 bytes

Ok, so I'm not an expert, but the linear gradient and the anti-aliased text makes the file bigger, even at the same palette

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Tech Support

Jacob Stetser · 03-11-1999, 04:54 PM

Yeah, the Yahoo banner uses extremely careful selection of colors, no antialiasing (you can see judicial use of dithering in the blue bar as it approaches the center, too)

Plus it has a lot of single color space (grey), which compresses well.

BTW, gwlubin, I don't think you were twiddling your thumbs while waiting for that page to load

It loads purty durn fast!

Pay attention to the fact that there are large areas of single color, that there are only about three or four greys, the yellows are duplicated..

My computer says there are a total of 41 colors in that image. I'd say about 36 of those colors are in the buttons. That's pretty good for compression

Jake

*jenili* · 03-12-1999, 02:57 AM

This oughta help, if you use Photoshop or similar graphics editor.

Quote:

FWIW: My basic technique for reducing GIF file sizes is pretty simple, but can have dramatic results with some images. Here's how it goes in Photoshop.
1. Image | Mode | Indexed. Web palette, no dithering.
2. Image | Mode | RGB.
3. Image | Mode | Exact.

This usually reduces the color depth by quite a bit, because you're remapping all existing colors to the Web palette and you seldom use all 216 of 'em in one image.

The "no dither" option often makes a big difference when you're going from non-Web colors to Web colors, because "no dither" will remap 'em to the nearest Web color (resulting in a larger contiguous block of color, which compresses better in GIFs) instead of dithering Web colors to approximate the original color if you were to squint (resulting in large blocks of alternating different colors, which don't compress well in GIFs).
jeni
-- back to the dratted CFP --

[This message has been edited by jenili (edited 03-12-99).]

gwlubin · 03-12-1999, 04:50 AM

Dear Jenili,

Thanks you, that was some great advice for the pundits with Photoshop.

I wonder if I can do the same thing in good old Paint Shop 5 ?

/g

Justin · 03-12-1999, 08:59 AM

That's what I use is Paint Shop Pro 5.01, and I don't think it's nearly that easy. Only thing I can think of is to snag this graphic:

http://www.vdj.net/216.bmp

and open it in PSP. Then save it's pallette, and apply that pallette to your images. As for the rest, it works about the same. It just doesn't have the web safe pallette built in (or I'm looking in the wrong place

)

That's how I do it (on the rare ocasion that I feel like worrying about the web safe colors anyway

). You'll want to not change the color depth or format of that image, as PSP has this habbit of changing the colors on you. Once the palette is saved you can just load it up for any image.

-------
Justin
-- Who finally redid his site today

--
http://www.vdj.net

gwlubin · 03-12-1999, 01:35 PM

Dear Jacob,

The email is through a company in the UK called Fetchmail.

It involved altering my DNS settings so that everything goes through them.

I have reserved certain names like webmaster@loobie.com etc.

I hesitate to recommend them at this stage until I know how reliable they are.

/g

Jacob Stetser · 03-13-1999, 12:15 AM

Justin, you change your site more often than a hummingbird flaps its wings trying to stay still in a tornado

Every time I've visited, it's had a different look. I'm planning a redesign of my own site, I don't think I've followed my own advice with the current one, which is OK to use but not great.

But don't look for it anytime soon

Wow, that loobie.com page has a lot of copy on it, graham

question, what web-based mail package do you use and is it hosted on FQ? I'm looking for one of those for intranet use and my big question is, does yours set up email aliases or does it collect all mail that goes to a certain email box and sort it out?