Kirk,

Images and graphics in a web page is one of the more confusing and important
aspects of web design. I am constantly learning more and more, and will give
you some reference links below for you to read by true "experts" in the
subject.

I can share some of my observations. As I said in another post to you,
Publisher 2002+ produces two different sets of code for different browsers.
Depending on which version of Publisher you are using the html coding engine
does this in different ways, but generally it will make copies of your
inserted images with the goal of serving up the best image for the
particular browser, and to fit the picture box on your page, with very mixed
results. View your site in both IE and FireFox to see some of the
differences.

If you use the graphic compression feature in Pub 2003 or 2007, you will get
pretty good results without sizing and optimizing the images before your
insert them into your Pub pages. But if you want the better results with the
faster loading images, you will reduce the size of the images to fit exactly
the size of the picture box on your Pub page, and use an image that is
"compressed" as small as possible and still look good when viewed.

You can design your page with full sized images, and just resize the picture
box until you get it the size you want when you are ready to convert it to
html. Assuming 2003, then select the image > format > picture > Size tab.
The goal is to resize your image in Irfanview to agree with the height and
width under Size and rotate. Note at the bottom of that dialog what the
original size is. If you click on Relative to original picture size, your
goal should be to see the Scale at 100%. Then before you go to Irfanview,
tweak the size of the box so it is some full number of pixels by typing in
the width under Size and rotate. Make sure the Lock aspect ratio is checked
and if you change the width then the height will automatically change
accordingly. Make note of the width.

Now open your original image in Irfanview or any other image editor, and
resize the width of the image to match the width of your picture box as
noted above...with aspect ration locked. When you Save AS the resampled
image, I would suggest that you add the width to the file name, so it will
be easy to find when it is time to insert it into your Pub page. For
example, when I am making thumbnails, I will rename mypicture.jpg to
mypicture_100.jpg, which is a 100 pixel wide version of my original image .
You can play with the amount of compression. The more compression, the lower
the quality of the image. Start at 30% and then experiment to see how small
you can go and have the image still look good. Better image editing programs
such as Adobe Elements will give you a preview of what the image will look
like, so you can see when it starts to become too pixelated and low quality.
The more compression, the smaller the file size, and the faster it will
load. Total file size will vary depending on the dimensions of the picture.
My 100 pixel wide jpg images are usually between 3 and 5 kb, 400 pixel width
average 15 to 20 kb. Gif images with less colors are smaller yet.

Now after you have resized and optimized the image go back to your Pub page,
right click the image, and change picture from file, and browse to where you
stored the new image. Then go back to the Format and size dialog...note you
can access it from right click or Format > Picture. Now adjust the scale to
100%. Tweak your layout as necessary. Now go to Tools > Options > Web tab
and uncheck "Rely on VML..." and "Allow PNG...". (note that if you are using
Pub 2007, the VML option has been removed, and this was primarily because of
feedback to microsoft about what it was doing to Pub web pages) Now when you
Publish to the Web and produce your html files, Publisher actually will not
make so many different copies of your inserted image as it is already at
100% scale. View the image in FF, and you will notice it will look better.

You could also use the compress graphics feature even after inserting the
new images, but I can't say that will help.

The only way to get better pictures is to import them rather than insert and
embed them into the Pub page, but that is another subject. If your site is
dependent upon the very best images possible, then importing them into the
web page will bypass the html coding engine in Pub, and give you the best
quality. However for most people this is beyond the point of diminishing
returns. Post back if you want to learn how to do that. It certainly can be
a good tool to learn for images such as banners that are on each page, as it
will speed up the loading and decrease the overall size of your Pub html
files.

Here are some good references for you:

Compress graphics file sizes to create smaller Publisher Web pages:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/HA011266301033.aspx

How to Prepare Images for Your Web Site by Herman Drost :
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/pages/80829.aspx

How to Prepare Images for Your Web Site - Part 2 by Herman Drost:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/dbartosik/pages/80828.aspx

The most complete and overwhelming source of information...you will go back
and back:
Scantips:
http://www.scantips.com/
http://www.scantips.com/basics1c.html
http://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html

Aren't you glad you asked? <grin>

DavidF