Body background images.

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Body background images.

daveginorge

8:58 am on Oct 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

Hi All

I use an image to create the <body> background of my page.

My Question
I use repeat the background to cover the page.
Is it better to use an image of width 1px or 100px. I ask as I am looking at download speed against processing time in the browser.

My site is used by many with telephone connections hence download speed is limited. I thought that if I were to use an image of 1px width size 360 bytes rather than a 100px width size 2.5 Kbytes the site would be more efficient, but I do not know about the extra processing of repeating the background more times.

Your knowledge and ideas would be very helpful here.

Thanks Dave

swa66

9:33 am on Oct 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

Telephone connections: go for the smallest possible size. Any modern CPU will outrun the (very) limited bandwidth your visitors have.

In fact: I'd seriously consider dropping the background in favor of a solid color.
Also optimize everything for smallest download size. Make sure to reuse your CSS and images you do download across pages as that will save you the most.

A bit OT: but I'd also make sure my web server supports compressed transfers.

tangor

11:08 am on Oct 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

The background has got to be REALLY important, otherwise ditch it! I'd go with swa66 in solid colors, but I'd go a tad more conservative and say only color of navs and nothing for content. These days you don't know if you're viewed on desktop, laptop, or phone...

daveginorge

10:11 pm on Oct 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks for all the input. I will go for my original idea of small images letting the browser do the work.