Writing for the Web

Regular Writing | Web Writing

Every photo, x-ray, diagram, chart or illustration you use in PowerPoint (or in any situation) has a size to it. That size is measured in Kilobytes (k). 1,000k equals 1 Megabyte (Mb). You will also hear it spoken of as memory since it takes up memory space on your hard drive, on the Server/Centernet and in your RAM.  1 Mb can take up to 4-5 minutes on a 56k modem, which is what most people have at their home location. Don't forget, just because you have a 56k modem, doesn't mean you are actually receiving or sending data at that rate. Your phone connection is most likely functioning at less than 56k. Some places in the Tulsa area never get over 30!

I checked through ten PPTs on centernet at random to see what an average size might be. It turns out the average had 59 pages. The lowest was 31 and the highest was 116. Imagine how long the download time is for those PPT's if the images aren't compressed well. If each slide had a full size, uncompressed image, the PPT with 116 pages would take almost 4 hours to download. This of course, means it wouldn't be downloaded and wouldn't be looked at because no one in their right mind will do that.

So, you have to keep the graphic elements to a very small size while still keeping the quality at an acceptable level.