There are some cases when a big graphic is just necessary, with all of its long loading time, etc. What can you do then? - Well, display a small "thumbnail" picture first, and let the visitor decide when the big graphic should be loaded.
Another way out of the dilemma of BIG graphics is, to keep the picture deliberately small at first. Smaller anyway than the average visitor will want to see it. And to have a small caption beneath the picture: "Click to enlarge" (To tell you the truth: Some web designers do that with a sly intent - to entice the visitors to go deeper down into the web site. So they will be more open to additional touting!)
Well, as a serious web site designer you will do only
<A HREF="big.htm" TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC="small.gif" ... ></A>
with the htm-file big.htm being simply a plain htm-file comprising only the image file big.gif (or big.jpg if you prefer jpg-images):
<IMG SRC="big.gif">
If you want the big image to be comfortably located within the new window, declare its BODY as follows:
<BODY topmargin=... bottommargin=... leftmargin=... rightmargin=...>Don't forget TARGET="_blank" when linking to the page with the big image. By that property your visitor's browser is told to display it in a window of its own. (Otherwise the original window would disappear, your visitor might be disoriented.)
In the next article of the "Web Site Design" series you will learn some delicacies you can use to control the image dimensions exactly. (Thus you don't even need two different image files for each picture. The "big" and the "small" link can refer to the same image file!)
Did I apply on my own web site the rules I'm preaching here? Well, look at