This forum thread had a suggestion for using php to switch out graphics on refresh. They also say you can use javascript, but they don't say how.

Oh, and just to show off how simple the XML that a non-techy can edit, here is it, with the greater-than and lesser-than symbols substituted with brackets:

[icons]

[icon image="profile.jpg" tooltip="Personal Profile" content="profile.html" /]

[icon image="experience.jpg" tooltip="Experience" content="experience.html" /]

[icon image="skills.jpg" tooltip="Skills" content="skills.html" /]

[icon image="education.jpg" tooltip="Education" content="education.html" /]

[icon image="contact.jpg" tooltip="Contact" content="contact.html" /]

[/icons]

Thanks for the advice ... I'm getting frustrated because they don't seem able to understand that not everyone is going to have the site download as quickly as they do ... and that we don't really have to have the complee text of every item on the front page. I showed one of them how the ALT tag works last week ....

I'm working on improving my PHP and Javascript skills, and I know for a fact that you can also do slideshows and all with them too. But Flash doesn't have to be a horrible memory hog if it's done well.

(The thing about the Church site that tommyrot linked to today is that for Flash, it's well-done -- optimized graphics, swiftly loading and functional. The content, however, is another matter....)

Toddson, maybe a field trip to the local library so they can see how fast it loads? Or ask people to try it from their home computers?

That is very frustrating. Can you take some of them to lunch at a Panera's or something, and have them try to access the site from there, just to give them some perspective?

Toddson, is your site likely to be looked at by Joe Average at home (where dialup is more likely) or by professionals in offices. If it's Joe Dialup most of the time, you really want to make it as fast as possible to at least get to the Good Stuff. According to my teachers, most users will give up on a page within 5 seconds.

The site's intended for professionals and a lot of them will be working from their offices. BUT ... some of them will be dialing in from a construction site in the middle of nowhere, some of them will be using BlackBerries or some such.

I've talked and talked and tried to explain that we want people to be able to access it under less than optimum conditions, but I keep hearing that they want things to look good, that they want the graphics to be sharp (this from someone who has her screen resolution set as low as possible).

And did I mention that everything has to be done through the MS CMS? A minimum of hand-coding - and non-standard (according to THEIR definition) things allowed. sigh

Also, unless you're intending the picture to be downloaded or put up on an HDMI screen there's no point in going above 72 dpi. Making there be a rule about total file size will get the youngin's paying attention to how they optimize their pictures.

I assume that when people talk about 300dpi images on web sites, they're saying that the width and height attributes in the html shrink the image down to the desired (much smaller) screen size? (since images in html are defined by pixels, and not inches, dpi doesn't have any real meaning). If that's the case, then not only is bandwidth wasted, but the images look worse, since the browser needs to shrink the image. Using a decent graphics program to shrink the image ahead of time will always give better results than forcing the browser to do it.

What's been happening is that the culprits will take an image file at 300dpi, approximate the size (eyeballing it in PhotoShop), upload it to the site, insert it on the page, then resize it (again, by eye). I've shown the girl with PhotoShop how to size it and then use the "save for web" feature ... but sometimes they'll say that something has to be high-res or it's not sharp enough.

I'm still trying to explain the difference between RGB and CMYK images .... (thank heaven for hair dye - I think mine's pure white under the red by now)