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Who
runs The Free Graphics Store?
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The Free Graphics Store is
run by
Australian Cybermalls
to thank you for taking the time to visit us. You can contact us about anything
relating to The Free Graphics Store that's not covered on this
page by email:
freegraf@ausmall.com.au
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Why
would anyone want graphics?
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Roughly 10% to
20% of all people who surf the Net will - at some time or another
- try their hand at web page design. It could be a personal home page, a
business page or something else.
When you try this you'll quickly discover
that two things you really need are good web graphics and good
web software. We try to provide both of them for you here - along with many
other useful resources and bolt-ons that will help you build a snappy site
fast!
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Where
do your graphics come from?
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All graphics provided on our
site are - to the very best of our knowledge - in the public domain
(and we'd certainly appreciate hearing about it if they're not!).
You can make use of them in any way you like providing you observe the few
commonsense
restrictions outlined
further below.
They come from graphics collections we own ourselves, from
other great public graphics archives that existed on the Net, from our talented
guest artists or - in a growing number of cases - from material we've
created ourselves from scratch.
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Why
do you display them the way you do?
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Every update we provide you
with a cluster of graphics on a related theme in 30K to 80K pages (eg: rulers,
pointers, page backgrounds etc). We do it the way we do to make our site
fast to load and fun to use.
We know your time is important.
We hope that by clustering graphics on a common theme and then displaying
them on rapid download pages this way, you can do a fast visual scan for
what you're looking for, then locate and clip what you need quickly.
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Do you
have a graphic for?....
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No, we're really sorry. Whatever
it is you're looking for, if it's not on display here we really don't have
it. And we hope you'll understand that we don't have enough time to
try to locate it or create it for you.
We certainly do try to expand our library in the directions
our visitors indicate to us (so you're most welcome to let us know about
your preferences). But we regret that we can't respond to individual requests.
However, if you're looking for a particular type of graphic, why not try
the other great graphics libraries that we've listed for you in our
Resources section? They'll
probably help save you hours of searching.
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How
do I?......
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We regret that we're unable to
provide you with any one-on-one HTML or web authoring advice. As with sourcing
specific graphics
(above), it's not that
we're unsympathetic (gosh! everyone has to start somewhere). It's
just that providing HTML advice or checking web pages is outside our scope.
There simply aren't enough hours in the day....
But if you're new to the web or HTML in general and need assistance in this
area, can we suggest you take a look at the HTML links in our
Resources section? At
least some of these should provide exactly the sort of assistance
you require!
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I'm
writing a book. Can I?...
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We often get approached
by publishing companies and authors producing books on web design who'd
like to include our graphics on their companion ROMs. We have a soft spot
for genuine educational publishers producing publications for students
and we like to help them wherever we can.
We're a little less enthusiastic about authors producing their own publications who'd
like us to help them make a profit by providing our content to them for free
(most other people probably would be too). But if you're a publisher,
you're most welcome to approach us
by email. We know that
individual proposals vary widely, and we promise we'll look at each request with an open mind.
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Can
I link directly to a graphic?
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No. In June 2000 our hosting
company eservers image-protected
our server to prevent this. But there's no longer any reason to directly
link to our graphics anyway! You can either clip individual images from our
libraries through your IE or Netscape browser, or download all the images
on each page as a ZIP file.
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How long
does a graphic stay in your archives?
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Graphics stay in our archives
indefinitely. The archives are growing all the time as we create and add
more images.
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Help!
I can't download any graphics!
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You can easily download graphics
from our site in two ways if you're using a Netscape or Microsoft
browser.
You can either clip individual images from pages by moving your mouse
cursor over the image of your choice, holding down your right mouse button
and selecting "Save Image As..." or "Save Picture As..." from the pop-up
menu to save the image from the screen to your hard drive (Mac users:
just hold down your main mouse button).
You can also now make use of our new on-screen FTP facilities to download
all images from a page as a Winzip file (most 80K or less).
If you're not using
Navigator, Communicator or Explorer (or the new AOL browser that incorporates
Internet Explorer technology) then you're in the 1% minority that doesn't
use a mainstream browser and you may run into difficulties with both these
methods. We're sorry, but we can't help in this case.
Similarly, if you're using
some versions of WebTV you can't download anything from
the Net. Again, we're sorry but we can't help you. You'll need to consult
your WebTV user manual or supplier.
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Are
there any restrictions on your graphics?
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You're free to use our graphics
on private or commercial sites, and you're free to acknowledge us as the
source (or not) providing you observe a couple of common sense
restrictions. They're not complicated, but they are important:
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You can't resell these
graphics. Most of the original authors (and that includes us) made these
graphics available freely to the Internet community. Each graphic, however,
represents a lot of work by some person at some time. So reselling them (by
bundling them into a collection or charging your clients a fee for something
you obtained for free) is unethical and violates the spirit in which these
were works were produced. It's also illegal. If you're a web author, you
can certainly charge for the work involved in mounting these graphics onto
a page you've designed or making adjustments to them. But you can't charge
a fee for the graphics themselves. OK?
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You can't claim authorship
of these graphics. We don't know who most of the original authors of
these graphics are (except the ones we've created ourselves, or the work
of our guest artists). But trying to pass off someone else's work as your
own is also wrong and illegal. If you're a web author you can certainly claim
copyright over any design that makes use of our graphics, but not over the
graphics themselves. Copyright on the graphics always resides with the original
author, even if they've put the work into the public domain.
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Finally, you may not copy
our pages and create your own instant graphics library on the Internet,
an intranet or a CD-ROM with them. We've invested hundreds of hours building
up The Free Graphics Store. This includes sourcing or creating the graphics,
juggling the images to get the page weightings correct, retouching or converting
formats... and then paying the substantial bandwidth bills it takes to operate
everything. We haven't stopped to add all of this up but it's quite a lot.
We simply ask you to respect that, and to recognise that you'll always be
found out if you don't and the consequences could be unfortunate. If you
want to add a graphics library to your own site then by all means feel free
to include ours via a framed or unframed link to our front page at
http://ausmall.com.au/freegraf. or the master
graphics archive index at
http://ausmall.com.au/freegraf/freegrfa.htm.
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Can
I link to The Free Graphics Store?
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Yes, you certainly can. The
two best URLs to link to are our front page at http://ausmall.com.au/freegraf
or our equally popular archives index page at http://ausmall.com.au/freegraf/freegrfa.htm.
We don't currently have special buttons or banners - but for speed, most
people prefer text links anyway. And thankyou!
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