Why Resize ?
(Pictures That Is)
I think just about everyone likes pictures and a lot of us like to receive them in email.
We don't always like how long it takes those picture-laden emails to download or open on the web though, especially if we have a dialup connection.
Have you ever gone to a website only to wait and wait while it loads? Wonder why it takes so long for some websites to load? Well, it could be because the website master/mistress put a lot of photos on the site and didn't 'optimize' those pictures before they put them on the website.
When Internet Explorer (or any other web browser) receives the information to go to a website, it starts processing all of the information on the requested site before it finishes loading. This process is using something called 'bandwidth'. The more information that is displayed on a site, the more bandwidth is required. So if the site has a lot of pictures, it can take a very long time to load, especially if the person requesting the site is on a dialup connection.
So what does all of that have to do with pictures in email? Simply this, email also uses bandwidth to deliver email. When digital cameras first hit the market they were really quite expensive and most of them took pictures that were fairly small and didn't use much bandwidth. So Granddad and Grandma could get those pictures fairly fast on their dialup connection.
Now the newest digital cameras take photos that are quite large, both in size and the amount of bandwidth required to send or receive in an email or view on a website.
In order for folks to be able to get pictures in emails and view pictures on website without using so much bandwidth, the new pictures need to be 'optimized'. Unless you are a webmaster, this may be a process you figure you don't need to learn.
However, there is a way to send these pictures to family and friends on dialup without using all that bandwidth. (They will get to see the pictures a lot faster and maybe their ISP won't refuse to download them because they are too large!) Microsoft has kindly told us all how on a page on their site, Share your digital photos instantly.
So share your photos and save the bandwidth!