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Two important factors to consider when adding images to your web pages are screen resolution and image size. Resolution refers to the number of dots that can be displayed on the screen. (The technical term for a dot is pixel, which is derived from the words "picture element.") The most common resolutions in use today are 800 by 600 and 1,024 by 768 where the first number indicates the number of pixels displayed horizontally and the second the number displayed vertically. The amount of screen space available to the browser window depends not only on the computer's screen resolution but also on the presence of other things like the Windows Taskbar that take up space.
Regardless what the resolution is on any computer displaying a web page, the actual size available to the web browser will be less. It doesn't make sense to display an image that is too large to be displayed in a single window. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, having to scroll the browser window to view an image is a pain that detracts from the page's usability. Second, large images are usually large files which means it will take longer for the browser to download the image before it can be displayed. One of the cardinal rules of web page design is to design pages that can be loaded quickly.
If you scan photographs or use pictures created by a digital camera, the resulting files will typically be too large to display in a browser window without scrolling. The image files should be reduced in size using an image editing program, so they will easily fit in the browser window. The two buttons below will each open a new browser window that displays the same picture, one large and the other small.