SharePoint has become a leading intranet platform for many businesses. There is more to SharePoint that just being a simple cloud-based solution that stores documents. It enables a centralised space for rich collaboration and communication for all users at a company, either working in the office or from home.
SharePoint provides an abundance of services and features that enables everyone to have easy and efficient access to all data, documents and resources that they could inevitably need. However, this platform is more than just a cloud-based file explorer. Most IT support London providers would vouch that companies make use of customisations like images and formatting to create a visually appealing and easy-to-navigate platform for everyone.
Images on SharePoint Sites:
Images are a great initiative to make the overall site look more appealing, but realistically, the types of images used and the size they take up can really affect the performance of the site. This may result in the page taking a lot longer to load for everyone, as the loading speed is dependent on the combined size of the whole page, including the images, HTML, JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Simple & Effective Images:
A simple but effective way to have images but not compromise on the performance of the site, is to optimise the images. Reducing images can be accomplished by using sprite, compression and resizing tools. Furthermore, SharePoint has a function where image performance can be utilised in a way that a page can have a single large image and then be displayed as various sections of the same image. This allows for the image to be reused rather than be reloaded each time.
Understanding the Need for Sprites:
If you want multiple images on one page, however, when each individual image needs to load, it can slow down the page and overall site. Therefore, sprites are a very effective tool that allows images to load at a faster speed. When making an image sprite, you are fundamentally making one image from multiple, where each of the smaller images has absolute positioning on the page. Effectively, this will save bandwidth, as you no longer need to download several images, but rather just one and then cache and reuse it when needed. According to managed IT services London providers, sprites can be considered as a form of image bundling. The best way to use sprites is when you do not need to change images as often as items like icons.
Image Compression:
An additional way of optimising images for page loading is through compression and optimisation. This is a process of reducing the image file size. A rule of thumb is that images do not need to be a high resolution, as they might only take up a little space on the page in any case.
The best way to resize an image is by looking at the maximum dimensions that the image will view on the site. Once you have the specific dimensions, it becomes very easy to use an image editor to do a resize of the image.
After the image has been resized, users can also optimise the compression. The aim of this process is to get the image size as low as possible while still maintaining the quality for everyone who has access to the page. The best way to test that you have not compressed the file too much, is by working on a high-definition display Speedyshort.com.
SharePoint’s Image Rendition:
Another feature that users can use to speed up page downloads is SharePoint image renditions. This tool enables users to create pre-defined image dimensions for different images. Without it, an image is still loading at the full resolution of the image even though the size is fixed by the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). An image will be automatically cropped and locked to the defined aspect ratio, if you use the image rendition tool.
Conclusion:
Considering the image-reducing solutions mentioned above, SharePoint has produced great features to assist this need. The ability to add as many images, and in any size as you want, can significantly impact the loading speed for everyone using the site. Microsoft 365 Consultants can reiterate the advantage of SharePoint’s image features, as it has ensured that there are multiple ways to optimise images so that you can have the same result aesthetically, but still maintain the site’s efficiency and accessibility.
