PNG Graphics...
 

So how come more designers do not export their graphics in PNG format? It has a superior transparency implementation and supports 24 bit color which allows for great high-color graphics and yet, it is often the same size or smaller than boring old GIF format.

Give us administrators a choice and create transparent PNGs as well as GIFs please.

There was a time when I thought GIF was going to be extinct due to patent issues...

Probably due to the lack support in Internet Explorer and although there are people are using alternative browsers Internet Explorer still holds the majority

Yea, there are serious problem with IE and .png format ( this can be fixed by an hack by OblivionKnight :)..I know my hacks xD )




~Curt

Well once IE7 is offically released and a lot more people start upgrading we won't have a problem very often with inproper png support, but that's a couple years down the road.

Has MS committed to improving PNG support in IE7 yet? I don't recall seeing any mentions of it yet.... would be good if they did, that way I can switch to transparent PNGs instead of transparent GIFs.

Not sure if they've committed to improving PNG support, but I downloaded the IE7 beta the other day. The browser itself has a long way to go before it's ready for prime time. I'll stick with Linux and Opera thankyouverymuch. :D

About 4 months ago.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx

Anyway, it isn't really a hack, to implement PNG transparency. It is a function that was passed off to DirectX in IE 5.5 for better implementation and to show off other filter capability. Internet Explorer for Macintosh and Unix machines supports PNG transparency natively. I use PNG files for all the post icons and smilies on community site and they look just fine in Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0.

All Oblivian Knight's hack does is apply the filter of which instructions have been on the MSDN site for 5 years.

Even with that PNG is a far superior graphic format and yet designer's rely on GIF. Not even matted JPEGs which provide a much better graphic quality. With all the hype on OS X and its PNG driven interface, you would think it would have more acceptability.

Thanks for the link, interesting reading.


... except that the page has to load first until the backgrounds appear correct. While the page loads the backgrounds appear with the wrong color and then after loading they become transparent.

I'm all too well familiar with the hack. The problem is that I (and most others I know) have absolutely no interest in having to rely upon somebody doing a hack/patch to have their graphics display properly in the most common browser.

Because it's still a universal format. Every browser out there can reliably show the same thing with a GIF.

Like Erwin mentioned, when the UniSys patents about GIF came up I was expecting alternate formats like PNG and Jpeg-2000 to get more exposure.

This is often the case, the "most popular" is not always the most superior (remember Betamax v VHS ?). Everyone knows about .gifs, they are universally supported.