[noliv]

I noticed today (only!) that both OmniWeb 4.1b and IE5.1 support pictures saved in PNG format (with 8 bits transparency!)

Do Win and Linux browsers also support PNG ?

I'm impatient to use this great format in future web pages...

[ism]

Check out http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#browsers

and the rest of the website at http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/

Personally I'd go for it, a lot of websites now use PNG, and you can't support the older browsers for ever.

[noliv]

Thank you for the links. I think that I'll use PNG very soon .

[Amorya]

IE6 on windows is very bad at handling PNG, it doesn't read the transparency right and stuff. IE5 on windows is better.

Amorya

[Mactoid]

IIRC, IE 5 for windows wasn't very good either. I can't ever remeber WinIE getting the alpha mask right.

However, as long as you either avoid alpha channels, or you can live with windows users getting a strange and ugly user experience (being Windows users, I think they're used to it ) then go ahead.

I stopped using GIF's a long time ago (well over a year) for personal sites. PNG's are just too cool

[hotani]

png is a really nice format, but not yet fully supported. I found out the hard way by creating a web page in OS X, then when I viewed it on a Winders machine, the transparency was replaced by a grey 'haze' - then I sadly switched it all back to gif. I honestly can't wait till it is supported, it really is a good format.

maybe about the time css is fully supported in all the major browsers png will be also - I say that jokingly with a glint of hope... I really want to use both of those.

[Millennium]

Most browsers support PNG pretty well these days. It's IE/Windows and NS4 which are, once again, holding things back (NS6 has great PNG support, but IE/Win's support hasn't gotten any better since version 4).

If you don't have any PNG's with transparency, you can use this pretty easily to replace GIF, if you want (check Freshmeat for a program called pngcrush, which can really optimize the size of your PNG's). Transparency is supported by most browsers out there, but you will have problems with IE/Windows. And as for MNG, only NS6 supports that one at the moment, so you'll have to use something else for animation.

[VRL]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>Most browsers support PNG pretty well these days. It's IE/Windows and NS4 which are, once again, holding things back (NS6 has great PNG support, but IE/Win's support hasn't gotten any better since version 4).

</STRONG>

Why am I not surprised ...

[Subzero Diesel949]

Originally posted by Amorya:
<STRONG>IE6 on windows is very bad at handling PNG, it doesn't read the transparency right and stuff. IE5 on windows is better.

Amorya</STRONG>

You can say that again. You also might not want to import PNGs if you're working with Flash as transparency isn't saved that well.

[Millennium]

At this point, I'd say that any PNG's which don't contain transparency are safe to use; very nearly all browsers still in use that can display graphics at all can do these kinds of PNG's.

A particularly good example of the kind of graphic that PNG is well-suited for, even with IE/Win's halfhearted support for the format, is screenshots. These contain fairly large areas of uniform color; JPEG's compression artifacts will always screw this up (take a screenshot of Aqua and convert it to JPEG and PNG; you will see a difference).

Also, IE/Win's support isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be (though it's still unacceptably bad). There is a way to do transparency, but it's al all-or-nothing thing; totally transparent or not at all (not unlike GIF's support). This means that something like the smilies on this board can translate to PNG pretty well. Likewise with buttons (though if you use complex or photographic backgrounds, then go with JPEG).

Basically, when it comes to PNG versus JPEG, look at the color complexity of your graphic. JPEG has compression artifact issues, however photographs tend to have so many subtle color shifts that you don't notice these (JPEG was designed for photographs for precisely this reason). But if you have computer-generated graphics, go with PNG. The size will be somewhat larget, but you can use pngcrush (mentioned earlier in this thread) to minimize that; it really does work wonders, particularly if you brute-force the compression (which isn't always necessary, but will often yield some impressive results).

A final note: images of animation are a judgement call on your part. Generally, JPEG will work well enough, but on pencil-sketch stuff you should at least consider PNG.

[calimehtar]

PNG is actually the Linux equivalent of pict / bmp these days -- the platform's standard image format for icons and widgets. I've never tried but I'd bet Linux browsers' gif support is up there among the best. iCab also doesn png pretty well, better than IE 6 for Windows.

Also PNG is a w3c recommendation. I believe gif has been deprecated for patent reasons. Gifs are almost always bigger files for the same image with the exception of 1- or 2-colour gifs.

Yes, IE doesn't do alpha which really bites because the alpha is one of PNG's strongest selling points. If you are doing a non-commercial site, use full alpha pngs and laugh at your windows users, that's my advice.

One final point, Photoshop seems to have problems with colour shift between gif and png though I can't say I know why, whether it's a bug or not etc.