Presentation description
In 2025 we have more web development tools at our disposal than ever before, and yet images on websites have never looked worse.
Gone are the glory days where you could craft your own pixel-perfect image and see it show up identically on a website. Images are now expected to shrink and grow to work with any possible device size. And designers are now emboldened to create images that flex to match the size of content, stretch to fill the screen, or have overlaying graphics that make it almost impossible to find a photo that really works.
The result is that most websites have images where faces are cropped off, where we ask client kindly not to tinker with the imagery, and where bloated file sizes are being unavoidably served to our end users. Ouch!
In this presentation I'll convince you why images are the "final boss" of web design via a visual walk-through of the many pitfalls of a modern Hero component. We'll then analyze why some solutions fail. And finally we'll look at a holistic solution that involves 3 factors:
- Technology solutions to help us with cropping including Drupal Focal Point, Drupal Image Styles, and native CSS/HTML techniques.
- Mindful design adjustments that can make our lives easier ahead of time.
- A content strategy geared towards helping content editors make informed choices that leave them feeling in control.
