What's the Best way to resize

I've heard some downsizing repeatedly in small increments (a few pixels smaller each time) until reaching the wanted dimension, I've heard some doing sharpening in between each resizing.

Can someone tell me which is the best way to downsize a picture for web display, how, and why?

I've often heard that upsizing incrementally was a good thing to do, but I don't reacall hearing that about downsizing. It wouldn't seem to serve any purpose.

I think incremental downsizing helps, but it is slight. I use Fred Miranda's Web Presenter plugin to do it.

I wouldn't do any sharpening until it's at the final size. However, I do use Bicubic Sharper when I do it by hand.

I've always downsized in increments. It seems to help retain detail a little better. I used to use an action I created to do this but now, like Scottes, I use Fred Miranda's plugin for the task.

I have heard people recommend lightly sharpening at each downsize step, but I don't do that myself.

Another user of FM's Web Presenter here. It's a neat tool which downsizes in small increments. You can also set to downsize with sharpening. In which case, it applies sharpening at each downsize step.

aha, I see...
I'll have to give that a go.

Thank you