Useful web browsing tips and tricks

.jpg (or jpeg) - ideal for photos or images with gradients where there is a large number of colours. Jpeg compresses the image data (mainly the colour information) within the image to make the file size much smaller. Most image editing programs offer the ability to control the amount of compression you add so that you can get a good balance between maintaining as much of the image quality as possible, yet reducing the file size as much as possible. No transparency supported.

.gif - ideal for images with fewer colours, or blocks of solid colour (rather than gradients). File size reduction is achieved by saving the image with a limited number of colours. Transparent pixels are supported to help with blending cut out images to the page background.

.png - is a great for either photos or graphics, and even supports alpha channels (varied opacity). File sizes can be larger (depending on the image), so only use when you need to.

If you ever need to save an image from a web page, most modern web browsers will allow you to click and drag the image straight to your desktop. Make sure your browser isn't maximised to your screen (so you can see a bit of your desktop on your screen as well as the browser window). Find the image that you want to save in your browser window, and simply click and drag it to the area of your desktop that is visible!
*This will not work in cases where the image is being displayed as a background image. In this case, you will need to find the URL of the image used in the background (via viewing the source code or by the browser's element inspector, if available), and then go to that URL in your browser. Now you should see only that image in your browser, which you can drag to your desktop.

Did you know that the address bar in Google Chrome also acts as a search field? Just enter what you'd like to search for directly into the address bar of Google Chrome, and hit return/enter, or even select one of the search options that is automatically generated as you type.

Sometimes you may want/need to show someone else what you're seeing on your screen - but the person you need to show it to isn't able to come and physically 'look' at your screen (e.g. they work in a different office). For this situation, it's easy to take a snapshot of your screen contents and email it as an image.

First, get the whole screen looking exactly as you want to show it. Now press the 'Print Screen' (or 'Prt Scr') key on your keyboard once. This captures an image to your clipboard (the same as when you 'copy' text from a document).
Now you should be able to paste your image directly into the body of an email and send it.
If your email program doesn't allow pasting of images straight into the body, you can of course paste your image into your favourite image editing software and save it as a file. To send this, you'd just attach it to an email as you would any other file.