Today we have the pleasure of presenting a book by Christoffer Schmitt, a well-known figure in the industry. “Designing Web and Mobile Graphics" is both a beginner's and intermediate guide that covers some of the basic subjects of standards-based web design with a foundation in HTML and CSS. But wait! That's not all. This book focuses on best practices and techniques for optimizing images and graphics for desktops, tablets, smartphones, and pretty much every device you can think of. The in-depth exploration of image formats and image optimization plays a key part.
The most interesting section of this book begins at Chapter 6: “Images for the Web” which is where we learn how each format compresses images in order to reduce their file size. The chapter provides practical examples such as: images with horizontal stripes compress better than those with vertical stripes in GIF format; and the kinds of effects which reduce the file size in a JPEG format.
Chapter 7 “Creating Images for the Web” teaches us to work efficiently with Illustrator and Photoshop by creating and exporting Raster and SVG files to any device whatsoever; even those with retina displays. The author gives us useful tips and tools to reduce image file size like imageoptim.com, pnggauntlet.com, and techniques such as “http compression” which is used to deliver graphics quickly to the audience.
The book covers a wide variety of topics like transparency in GIF, PNG, and CSS; image masking; creating favicons and mobile bookmarks; using icon fonts; responsive image maps; adapting images and media for responsive web projects; compressing Retina images... And much, much more.