Using the .png file format

[pardicity3]

Okay, so the first time I saw anyone using .png for their image files I thought to myself, "What are they thinking?" This was because I thought that .png was just some kind of special extension for a graphics program. But now, I am seeing more and more people using png's. I have tried to do some research and I still don't understant png's much. All I picked up was something about transparancey(sp?)...

So, any help or explanations about .png's would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks as always :)!

[Mhtml]

Portable Network Graphics

I started using .png when I read that there is actually a company that owns the rights to .gif and could theoretically make people pay to use the file format in there programs and images made from them.

They have better transparency than .gif and have the ability to be exported in true colour where as .gif can only be exported with a maxmum of 256 colours.

I also believe that .png format images are smaller than .gif

but .gif has the advantage of being animated where as .png does not as yet.

[MCookie]

As far as I know - I could be wrong, there's no IE - Windows browser that supports the wonderful PNG transparancy.

What I do know for sure though; PNG images are absolutely NOT smaller than GIF images. More like 5 times as large.

[Mhtml]

really? hmm.. I guess thats why the colour quality is so much better especialy with greyscale.

[jkd]

Originally posted by Mhtml
but .gif has the advantage of being animated where as .png does not as yet.

Sure they are - "MNG" are animated PNG images.

PNG images have an alpha channel for tranlucency, which IE/Win doesn't support, as well as Gamma declarations so that they appear of the same brightness on all computers.

IE5/Mac has the best support for PNG, followed by Mozilla, and then by Opera.
I know Mozilla also supports MNG, but I don't know about other browser support.

[MCookie]

Found this at MS. I never use proprietary code, but this is interesting.

AlphaImageLoader Filter

Displays an image within the boundaries of the object and between the object background and content, with options to clip or resize the image. When loading a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image, transparency —from zero to 100 percent— is supported.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/filter/reference/filters/alphaimageloader.asp