Where can I find someone who will
build me a web site for free and/or host me free?
Not
in this Chat room this room is to help you do it yourself,
however check
www.tripod.com for easy templates and some turnkey solutions
mostly free. Free web hosting? Try http://www.angelfire.com
Where can I learn basic HTML?
http://jmarshall.com/easy/html/
has a pretty good tutorial.
How do I make my graphics look
better?
TIP #1 - Avoid Background Color Shifts
If you try to code the background color of a Web page to match
the background of an image placed on the Web page, the colors
may not exactly match in all browsers or on every monitor.
To help avoid color shift problems, create a small GIF (16x16
pixels or so) of the desired color and use it as a background
tile.
TIP #2 - Avoid Halos
Avoid halos by working with images in a layer above another
layer that matches your Web page background. Anti-alias the
image to the background, then cut away as much of the background
as possible.
TIP #3 - Anti-Alias
Smoothing the edges of images or text by blurring or blending
the edges into the background is known as anti-aliasing. Most
bitmapped images, with the exception of very small text, require
anti-aliasing to get rid of jagged, rough edges. While most
graphics programs will have an anti-alias setting, experiment
to get just the right amount -- too much and your images will
appear blurry, too little and they will appear jagged.
TIP #4 - Touch Ups
Pixel-level touchups can improve the appearance of bitmapped
images and make them compress to smaller file sizes. (Vector
images can be enlarged or reduced without loss of sharpness
or quality.) Zoom in on images in a graphics program to work
at the pixel level. Clean up the image by getting rid of off-color
pixels. Use smudge or blur tools to smooth out rough edges.
TIP #5 - The Right Size
Always re-size images using a graphics program. Never re-size
images by setting the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes of the IMG
tag to size that is different from the actual dimensions of
the image.
TIP #6 - Optimize & Compress
Understanding how file compression works will help you create
images that compress to smaller file sizes. In general, blurring
reduces the size of JPEG files; decreasing the number of colors
used and making each color area as large as possible will
reduce the size of GIF images.
TIP #7 - The Right Format
Save images in the right file format. Images with large areas
of solid color (such as vector graphics or illustrations)
should be saved as GIFs. Images with lots of shading or gradients
(such as photos) should be saved in the JPEG format. Very
small photos are the exception, as they are often smaller
when saved as GIFs.
TIP #8 - Only Save a JPEG Once
To avoid deterioration of a JPEG image, avoid re-saving it.
Every time a JPEG file is saved, it loses information and,
therefore, quality. Save JPEGs in a loss less format (such
as TIF of PSD). Then, if you need to make changes to the image
later, you can work with the non-JPEG file, saving it as a
new JPEG when you're done.
(my thanks to about.com)
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