Forum Moderators: not2easy
Can anyone direct me to a compatibility list or tell me which browsers are compatible with PNG graphics or will display them properly?
I'd like to start using the PNG format for photographs on web sites but want to get an idea as to how many browsers are compatible with the PNG file format before I do. Or should I wait a year or so until the majority of web surfers upgrade their browsers?
Are there advantages to PNG compared to .gif or .jpg? What are they?
Why would one want to save a PNG graphic in a png-8 as opposed to png-24 format, or vice versa? What's the difference?
Tanks anyone.
This lets you do all kinds of funky semi-transparent effects, proper anti-aliasing and soft shadows.
Bad news is IE doesn't support this. :(
It treats them like Gifs instead... aaargh.....
Other than that I think support for PNG is pretty universal.
For photographs I'd stick with JPG.
Do you know if Microsoft will ever decide to (or do they plan to) support PNG?
There are ways to get IE to support variable transparencies using javascript - see [alistapart.com...]
RE: the difference between png-8 and png-24 - I think this refers to the colour depth of the picture. So PNG-24 will have a bigger colour depth, but the resulting files will be bigger.
..most of the latest versions of the major browsers fully support alpha transparency with PNG—namely, Netscape 6, Opera 6, and recently-released Mozilla 1, all on Windows; and, for the Mac, Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 6, Opera 5, Mozilla 1, OmniWeb 3.1, and ICab 1.9. Incredibly, PNG even works on Opera 6 for Linux, on WebTV, and on Sega Dreamcast.
So MS IE 6 does support transparency in png after all?
Only on the Mac, not Windows.
To see the difference compare [libpng.org...] on Win/IE6 and Opera 7.
I'm not a mac guy, is Opera the mac version of IE?
If you've never tried it then you really should.
It is a very nice browser, loads of great features and has way better standards compliancy than IE.
See [opera.com...] for info and download.
The transparency options just make it better.
PNGs are better quality than JPEGs
The transparency options would put PNG hands-down, no-contest above GIF... IF Explorer supported the feature. I'm still undecided about using PNG instead of JPG though, and without Explorer supporting the major advantageous feature of the format, I couldn't recommend PNG as the best choice for a commercial website.
With an ecom venture, you can't just consider what the newest browsers are or aren't supporting... you have to also consider that portions of your potential customer base will still be using older browsers as well. So a balance needs to be found: how important is the principle of PNG to you compared to the principle of serving your customers as well as possible?
I'd say give it another year, see what happens with the next generation of IE, and keep PNGs for personal or specialty sites until then.
if anyone who works for or has knowledge of Microsoft IE...
Maybe they can answer this - why can't the richest man in the world and the biggest software company in the world make IE compatible with PNG transparency? Or why do they choose to not do so? :)
Maybe their programmers don't know how ;)
If transparency is a big deal than you have no choice to use gif. But since you said you wanted to use it for photographs, PNG looks nicer, and its LOSSLESS.
>>> The king high fives his buddies from the department of png and collects his money...
