On the Horizon: JPEG2000 and Vector-Based Graphics | Speed Up Your Site[c] Web Site Optimization

Two types of graphic formats on the horizon look promising : JPEG2000 and vector-based graphics.

The new JPEG2000 format is designed to be a superior replacement for the popular JPEG format. The JPEG2000 format uses wavelet technology to achieve higher compression ratios with radically reduced artifacts. The JPEG2000 format can compress images to 100:1 ratios or higher with much less image degradation than JPEGs. JPEG2000 also has a lossless compression option that typically achieves 3:1 to 4:1 compression. The JPEG2000 specification has been approved, but we won't see widespread use of this image format until browsers embed a JPEG2000 decompressor within their code.

Vector-based formats are much more efficient for displaying graphics on the web. Flash is ubiquitous, and it typically creates animations 10 times smaller than animated GIFs. Scalable Vector Graphics is the W3C's standards-based answer to Flash. These vector-based graphical formats can help reduce the footprint of images on the web, but can require plug-ins. For Flash optimization techniques, see Chapter 13, "Minimizing Multimedia," and Chapter 10, "Optimizing JavaScript for Execution Speed."

Graphics Tools

There are too many tools to list them all here. The following list includes only tools with PNG support. Most of them support GIF and JPEG as well.

Viewers: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapvw.html
Editors: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngaped.html
Converters: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapcv.html

The most popular of these are listed here:

ACDSEE: http://www.acdsystems.com
Macromedia Fireworks: http://www.macromedia.com
Adobe Photoshop and ImageReady: http://www.adobe.com
IrfanView: http://www. irfanview .com/
JPEG Cruncher and GIF Cruncher from Spinwave: http://www.spinwave.com/
JPEG Wizard etc. from Pegasus Imaging: http://www.jpg.com
ProJPEG, PhotoGIF, GIFMation, SuperGIF, and other tools from BoxTop Software: http://www.boxtopsoft.com/
Web Image Guru (GIF, JPEG, and PNG optimization) from VIMAS: http://www.vimas.com/