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)

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.

So you're saying that they're ignorant, then? Sigh...

They have access to these tools, but they've never been taught more than the technical details of how to use them. And, like I said - they don't really understand that other people have different systems (should have heard me explaining ... or tryng to explain ... why using a bunch of fancy fonts wasn't a good idea).

My Mac is freezing at the grey bootup screen. Anything I can/should do other than the genius bar? Before the reboot attempt, I had a spinning beach ball after trying to play a video on a web page.

You can hold down Command-V while it's booting to get a verbose boot. You might get some idea what's causing it to freeze.

First Google Android Netbooks spotted

Certainly this can't be it. The first Google Android netbook should definitely be more monumental than this $100-$200 device from SkyTone. Guangzhou, China-based Skytone is famous for making Skype headsets and ultra low cost children's computers. But, as of today, they have on their website, the Alpha-680 Google Android netbook. In Pink, Yellow, Red, Black and White.

While this device is going to be extremely cheap, it does have some redeeming qualities. It looks to have a flip around touch screen and a gaming pad built in. And this thing does have Wifi, Ethernet, 3G, USB Ports and an SD card slot in a $100-ish package.

The specs overall are anemic, like you'd expect for a low-cost Netbook.

This is just a glorified cellphone...without the glory. Its build quality also looks extremely low end. However, with Skytone's Skype heritage, at least it will be able to function as a Skype phone.

I'd like to see a better processor, more RAM and more local storage. I guess the SD card slot is means enough to put in 32GB more Flash storage if desired. And as long as this thing runs a browser over WiFi, it is hard to complain about a $100 device. Worst case scenario, you can give it to a child to play with.

In terms of arguments:

Can you tell them that having a site that can't be seen on blackberries (and cell phones in general), that can't be seen on low bandwidth connections (and that include a lot of wireless connections on laptops) is really unprofessional. Putting stuff into flash that does not need to be put into flash is a widely made mistake, comitted b people who don't know that they are doing. Would it be too harsh to say that you think too much of this company to have your site make mistakes that label as amatateur hour?

Point out that google does not use flash or high res graphics.

Also point out that in general, super high res graphics don't belong on either the main page or integrated into into pages with a lot of text information. The professional way to use high res graphics is integate low res graphics into standard pages that serve as links to high res.

Are there exceptions to this? Sure major ones: sites whose business model centers around media - Disney, Tv networks that sort of things. (Even then I think it would be bette if the fuckers did not put flash video on the main page.)

I will add that a flash site not only excludes phone users and many other mobile users. Most journals ban flash from the newsroom, because of the security risks. So if you make your site flash-centric you are also making in inaccessible to the many journalists. Is free publicity unimportant to your business?