There is nothing worse than a
website with crude GIF graphics or small fuzzy JPEGs.
High quality graphics are a must for any professional business
or organization's web site. Although we don't recommend Flash
for static images, the Flash vector graphics system has some
advantages over other kinds of Web graphics.
Vector Graphics Versus Raster Graphics
Vector graphics have certain characteristics that are due to
how they are stored by a computer. A vector graphics file
contains the math to redraw the image onscreen. For example, a
circle includes information such as the radius, the line
thickness, and the color. All the graphics you create inside
Flash are vector based. Vector graphics have two advantages:
The file size tends to remain small (therefore, it downloads
fast), and the image can be scaled to any size without any
degradation of the image quality (a circle is still a circle,
even if it’s a large circle).
The reasons behind Flash for being the choicest 2D animation
are many. But amidst all, the easy-to-use interface for vector
illustration tops the chart of its specialties. The coming
into being and simultaneous development of Flash carries along
with it the symbol of a need that typifies the recognition
towards graphical details in every presentation.
Vector graphics are great, but it’s important to realize their
disadvantages. Vector graphics require the user’s computer to
work hard to display the image (it has to do a lot of math),
and vector graphics often look "computery" or antiseptic
because they tend to involve geometric shapes. Both
disadvantages can be overcome, but you should be aware of
them.
Bitmapped graphics (also called raster graphics) are
fundamentally different from vector graphics. A raster
graphics file contains the color information for each pixel.
If the image is 100 pixels by 100 pixels, that’s 10,000
pixels, each of which has a color value. As a result, raster
graphics are almost always relatively large files. Raster
graphics also can’t be scaled very effectively. They tend to
get grainy, similar to a photograph that has been enlarged. An
advantage of raster graphics is that they appear onscreen very
quickly.
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It might seem that vector
graphics are obviously the better choice. However, the
decision of whether to use vector graphics or raster graphics
should be based on the nature of the image. If the image is
geometric, with clear delineations of color, a vector graphic
is a good choice. If the image is a photograph of a person or
a geographic location, nothing but a bitmap will do.
New Vector Technologies
The work has begun to define a new vector-based graphic format
for the Web at the W3C. According to the W3C's own staff
comments on each submission, no one vector-based graphics
format will be chosen over another. Instead, it would be the
goal of a new W3C Scalable Vector Graphics working group to
place each of these formats on its agenda, and combine them
into a single, all-encompassing XML-based vector graphics
standard.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a family of specifications
of XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector
graphics, both static and dynamic (interactive or animated).
The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under
development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.
SVG images and their behaviours are defined in XML text files.
This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted and,
if required, compressed.
SVG is also well-suited to small and mobile devices. The SVG
Basic and SVG Tiny specifications were developed with just
such uses in mind and many current mobile devices support
them.
Since they are XML files, SVG images can be edited with any
text editor, but specialized SVG-based drawing programs are
also available.
All companies involved have said that they expect it will be
very easy to consolidate the shape features between PGML, VML
and any other submissions into a cohesive standard for
vector-based graphics. Microsoft and Adobe in particular have
made numerous public statements about being committed to the
W3C standards process. The best of VML, PGML and any other
proposed format will have to be merged into a standard that
will be supported by all vendors.
Eventually it may be that many types of Web graphics may be
represented using vector art, rather than raster based bitmaps
such as JPEG and GIF.
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