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Bye Bye GIFs...Hello PNGs

  • 21-06-2002 5:20pm
    #1
    Oeneus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,975 ✭✭✭


    An article from Computer Arts Web Design Special magazine brought this thought to me as it was about future image formats for the web.

    They were going on about Flash and the SWF format already sending the Animated GIF to extinction. And now soon that PNG will now start to replace the GIF and the JPEG formats.

    Would it be safe to say that it would be a good idea to start using PNGs for web designing now? I mean what's their filesize in comparison to GIFs and is there a good range of compression options for the PNG? I haven't ever used the latest Fireworks MX so I haven't any idea if there have been extra PNG options added.


Comments

  • #2
    sceptre
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,608 ✭✭✭✭sceptre


    PNG has been a long tims coming. Must be three years or more since I first heard about the format (and I'm sure real webdesigners and graphic designers have been waiting even longer)

    Internet Explorer has supported PNG since version 4. Netscape has also supported it since v4, Opera since 3.51. So I'd personally regard it as safe to use now (as most users will be using a browser that supports it)

    However both IE 4 and 5 need the PNG to be displayed as part of a webpage - they won't diaplay it on its own (not sure about v6 - haven't used the format in that long)

    One of the big advantages of PNG was seen to be that unlike GIF (patent owned by Unisys), PNG is patent-free.

    The official PNG page (according to the W3C) is at
    http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/

    Worth reading is the "history" at
    http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/slashpng-1999.html

    Most of the time, PNG-8 images are smaller than GIFs (on average by up to 30%). For images with very few colours and simple patterns, GIF can still be smaller

    PNG is basically a lossless format so may not kill off JPEGs (it also may not kill off GIFs but this is what it was developed to do)


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