Smush It! Firefox extension

Even with most people using broadband, it is still very important to pay attention to file sizes when creating websites and blog posts.

Large images can still take a long time to download even on a broadband connection and if a post becomes very popular on the web, optimising images for size can mean the difference between a web server being able to cope or not.

Smush it! is available as a website but this add-on makes the process of submitting a website much easier. It appears as a small icon in the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window. Just right-click on it and then left-click on Run Smush It! The website will be submitted to Smush It! and a report will be displayed showing which images can be improved.

Hover the mouse over each image name to show a preview of the improved image and left-click on it to see the image in a new Firefox tab. Alternatively all the images can be downloaded in a single zip file by clicking on the 'Download smushed images' button.

Hopefully, a good-quality web editor will already be optimising images but this is very useful as a way of double-checking and for sites that use online editors, such as blogs.