Internet Explorer and PNG

Problems with transparency

[NGene]

I'm a Linux user and don't have Windows installed, so I don't know much about IE. I recently tested a HTML page, that had transparent PNG graphics, with a friend's browser. She's using IE 6 and I was quite surprised to see that the transparent parts of my pictures weren't transparent. The PNG's were ok with Netscape 6 (both my Linux version and her Windows version), Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror. Only IE was having problems.

I refuse to believe that a recent version of IE can't handle transparent PNG's properly. Is this a problem with her browser only, or is IE really so poor that it still doesn't understand PNG?

[Dreamquick]

I believe normal transparent PNGs (ie where a single colour is either transparent or not) will work but that IE cannot handle PNGs with alpha transparency enabled.

I too found this out the hard way...

- Tony

[korkus2000]

Good source of IE PNG issues
[libpng.org...]

This thread also covers PNG pretty well.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edit_g]

You can always use Opera to test for IE issues as well.

[Dreamquick]

edit_g,

No offence meant but the only guaranteed way to *really* test IE issues is to actually use IE to do the testing. That way I / client can be sure "IE Compatible" actually means IE compatible and not "Compatible with Opera pretending to be IE"...

- Tony

[edit_g]

None taken. I just meant as a quick fix to see if any obvious problems are evident. A site should be tested in every browser you can find before you roll it out.

PS- you're talking to someone who checks over his sites with Lynx...

[RFranzen]

On one of the PNG mail lists a while back this was discussed. Apparantly IE on the Macintosh has excellent support for PNG transparancy, both single-color and alpha channel. For reasons only the Bill can explain, Microsoft did not port this level of support to IE on Windows.

-- Rich