Anne (who by the way is a man despite the name “Anne,” much like Dominique de Villepin, and is pronounced “Ahn-ney”) left a comment on my post pimping out a better looking variation on Dave Shea’s default WordPress CSS file. Anne was not content with saying that my design sucks (which he didn’t), nor did he point out something wrong with the actual content and its context within the post. Instead, he decides to lecture me on not using JPEG compression for posting screenshots, as there are more appropriate extensions for them.

At first I thought the “please” in his comment was out of politeness, and I replied with courtesy as well. However, the more I read and re-read that comment I saw, more and more, a tone of condescension. So here’s the quick answer to Anne, who by the way decides the usage of all files on the internet: Go fuck yourself and bite me. Bite me, bite me, bite me.

Here’s the long answer. When deciding how I want save my images as for the web, there are only two factors: file size, and image quality. The screenshot in question is a pretty large one, at more than 600 pixels wide. At 29KB it’s also a bulky JPEG file, but the GIF at “0 lossy” was at more than 40KB. My problem with saving GIFs that large is that with screenshots, GIF lossy compression can make some of my screenshots really ugly, even with the 256-color palette. When I tried to compress at “40 lossy” the screenshot was horribly degraded.

For me there was no conflict: use the best compression technique to produce a good looking image that remains balanced in terms of file size. As much as I would like to continue publicly berating Anne (who by the way is a man) for his total audacity preaching while lacking common sense, I’d rather try and understand the reasoning behind his comment and his instruction (despite the “please” at its beginning).

We are all aware of a goal for semantic web markup. XHTML is a markup language, basically telling client programs that a particular set of content, from the beginning of one tag to another, is so and so element, with such and such attributes. If something is a header, mark it as such. I don’t think that semantic web markup ever included the file extensions of images used in XHTML documents. Last time I checked, the extent of the markup involving images is through the use of the img tag.

Nowhere does it say that a JPEG extension denoted the character of the content of the image that carries it. If I recall, PNG compression can actually compress continuous-tone images such as photographs just as well as JPEG does. Would it be inappropriate, then, to use PNG instead of JPG at the cost of bandwidth and image quality? In what name was that comment left? I do not understand why it is inappropriate to post a screenshot as a JPEG.

This is not equivalent to the use of tables instead of good markup in web design. XHTML tags mean something. Image file extensions only indicate the format of that file (and the appropriate compression, if any), nothing more. An image file should be compressed in a particular way in an attempt to strike a balance between image quality and bandwidth and basic fucking courtesy to one’s visitors. If you can’t see the difference, Anne, it seems you need to reevaluate exactly how semantic you want your semanticity to be without losing context.