[Bobby]

I've been working with some small images and feel that PNG is the best format, due to the images being so tiny in size, and because they support alpha masks with transparent backgrounds (or whatever).

For some reason, however, when I preview the items in IE 6 on my NT machine at work, the backgrounds pretty much ALL look solid orange, not transparent at all! Anybody know why this is???

[DeathMan]

because IE for PC doesn't support PNG. This is my number 1 reason for hating microsoft.

[redJag]

They support PNG16 which means a pixel is transparent completely or not at all. PNG32 means you can have colors that are slightly transparent and all neat things. And Microsoft sucks!

Travis
forté web design

[DeathMan]

anyone have any idea why they would support png 16 and not 32? it would enhance the web experience. Why would they not want developers to use it? what do they have to lose? I don't understand....

[wrwjpn]

because if they can't make money off it they won't support it.

just my 2 cents worth.

[redJag]

Yeah, pretty much. When I design websites for my own personal use, I use PNG32s and tell Windows users to get a good browser or deal with ugly pics, or don't come to my site. If people would stop using that inferior OS it would really make my day..

[Millennium]

IE has actually supported PNG32 for a long time. At least, technically it has.

However, for reasons no one has ever been able to understand (probably an attempt to undermine PNG as a standard), their PNG32 code is not the default PNG image handler. Nevertheless, it can be dealt with.

Unfortunately, it's one hell of a code-bloater, becase you'll have to wrap all of your PNG-containing IMG tags with an OBJECT tag. And not just ant OBJECT tag; since you're referencing an ActiveX control (which is included with IE, but unfortunately I forget the necessary information) you have to bloat it even more. And I don't have a URL either; I'm looking for one, but no luck yet. But take heart; PNG can be made to work properly in IE. I'm just not totally certain of the specifics on how it is done.

[redJag]

See..that means unsupported if you ask me. Microsoft is making people jump through hoops in an attempt to undermine the format (I think you said that, too) and I don't like it a single bit. Its a very nice format. They're just bitter from the utter failure of their format (BITMAPS!!).

[zorn]

what is the default handler then? also where is an example of this object code .. just for curiousoty, i'll be damned if I'm going to add it to all my img tags!

[derbs]

there is a solution!

download and unstuff this .sit file:

http://212.19.82.70/tests/png.js.sit

then on every page reference the script:

[script language="text/javascript" src="path/to/png.js"][/script]

and just like magic your PNGs work in IE 5.5+ on windows

By the way, this only works with [img]s on your page, not table backgrounds etc. But it's better than nothing.

[york28]

only slightly. having transparent backgrounds is awesome. oh well.

[Bobby]

I'll have to try this. Seems so simple, if it works then cool...


I'm assuming I don't have to do anything else in the page? I don't need to include a ton of other stuff in tags though, will I???

Originally posted by derbs:
there is a solution!

download and unstuff this .sit file:

http://212.19.82.70/tests/png.js.sit

then on every page reference the script:

[script language="text/javascript" src="path/to/png.js"][/script]

and just like magic your PNGs work in IE 5.5+ on windows

By the way, this only works with [img]s on your page, not table backgrounds etc. But it's better than nothing.

[Bobby]

Cool. I did give this a try, it worked very well. I did find one problem not clearly explained. There is a URL to a transparent gif in the script (called spacer.gif in something like images/furnature/spacer.gif), this needs to be corrected to a valid image (transparent gif), or you end up with a broken image box under the PNG. Fortunatly I do have this kind of image located at http://www.torgo.org/media/images/spacer.gif
Its a GIF 1x1 in size and the one pixel is transparent... Also the code to include the script needs to be reformated and have one tiny modificaiton. The tag that I ended up with is:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="png.js"></SCRIPT>

This is of corse the normal container for HTML. I'm guessing you used [] due to the normal inability for the <> tags to be displayed (I'm using the html escape characters in this post to show them)... But this allows me to include this script in my header include, at which point I never have to think twice about using a PNG32 image again...

Originally posted by derbs:
there is a solution!

download and unstuff this .sit file:

http://212.19.82.70/tests/png.js.sit

then on every page reference the script:

[script language="text/javascript" src="path/to/png.js"][/script]

and just like magic your PNGs work in IE 5.5+ on windows

By the way, this only works with [img]s on your page, not table backgrounds etc. But it's better than nothing.

[SPiNdustrious]

Check out A List Apart. Their current issue has an article about overcoming poor PNG support in browsers:

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/pngopacity/

-Peter