What is the best format to use in web design? It is .gif, .jpg or are flash images better? Which one loads faster and does these formats affect your SERPS?

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Depends. It doesn't matter for the SERPs.

.gif: for images with only a few colors, like a country flag (usually three).
.jpg: for images with lots of colors (more than 256), has a 100 level compression method. 0 is the lowest quality, 10 the highest, around 40 is good for websites.
flash images: too big

just save them as all three and see which is the smallest and use that one

Flash is the least desirable choice. It is better to keep things simple.

elarax already explained this above.
I go for jpg images since they are better in quality (tons of colors) and size (it doesn't use so much space).

PNG image format is also a good option. It is found to be much better than GIF in terms of compression and resolution. The bottom line is regardless of image format used, images should be properly optimized for easy site loading.

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I was thinking flash images would be too big as well but that is some good information there.
I'm glad I learnt something new today.
Thanks for your clear explanation!

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I disagree. It is the fastest loading of all formats at this time will it comes to single images.

I like jpeg. I guess there are other formats, but I choose to stick with this one.

jpg & png work well for me. Good mouth feel, nice bouquet, oaky with undertones of currant and vanilla.

I stick with jpg. because it doesn't slow thepages down and not everyone has a high speed connection. The more people you can include in your viewing audience, the better off you are.

Actually you would be surprised how many people do not have real high speed. Jpg. are still the bulkiest format but CSS helps by speeding up the download.

I have always been comfortable with jpeg images. It is fast to upload pictures like these. It is also space efficient. I think GIF images are good for animations. But JPEG is simply the best.

I believe the best format is BMP followed by PSP, however they take too much bytes so my following option is JPG.

Many people says PNG are great but I have found problems like not displaying transparency or show of low quality in comparison with JPG.

I like gif for transparencies though.