PNG support in browsers

[gwx03]

What browsers do not support PNGs yet? I know from experience that NN7, NN6 and IE6 support PNGs..

What about the other browsers? Do they support PNGs and one of their key features which I am about to use to design a portfolio site - 254 levels of transparency?

Thanks

[u2orange]

As far as I am aware, true png @ 256 level transparency is only supported by the Mac, and only 1 level transparency on the PC.

HTH
u2o

[courtjester]

PNG's BLEH... Sorry, been down that path and came back.. In my opinion JPEG's are the best. Smallest in size, clearest in picture, Supports all needed colors, and when you stretch it it doesn't warp as fast as everything else... Well, thats my opinion.. and my experience. Check your file size on those PNG's. Ten bucks says it takes you 3 days to load a page going that way :wink:

[Webforumz Staff]

Kulegamr, the incredible thing about PNGs is that they can include transparency! JPEG cannot do that.

The only time I use PNGs is in flash - As flash supports them and therefore they will display in any browser that way. Not a good method I know, but I don't know which browsers don't support PNG either...

[Webforumz Staff]

There's a very good article on this on alistapart.com including work arounds for different browsers.

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

[courtjester]

what the heck is a transparency??? Obviously I dont know. I thought that was when you could see through it... I can do that with GIF's.. unless of course you are meaning the same thing except when you create text with a transparent BG that it will be text and no invisible box around it.. I am confused.... Please explain.

[Webforumz Staff]

GIFs are limited to a 256 colour pallete. Thus you can't use them for photo-quality pictures, only animations, cartoons, etc. PNGs have a lot more colours and have degrees of transparency too, meaning that parts of the image can be more transparent than others. So for example, you could have a ray of light that would look realistic, etc.

[courtjester]

Ahh.. this is a nice feature.. Thanks for showing me.. Ohh, and Fireworks saves about 5 times larger than photoshop.. go figure..

[gwx03]

PNGs are really small for some graphics. Try it out in fireworks and you'll be amazed. I need PNGs cause of the transparency... JPEGs don't offer a single bit of it... GIFs do, but only 2 ( on or off ).

[gwx03]

From alistapart.com

"Which is a shame, because PNG makes GIF look pretty pathetic: it supports gamma correction, (sometimes) smaller file sizes, loss-less compression, up to 48-bit color, and, best of all, true alpha transparency."

Kulegamr, PNGs offer many levels of transparency compared to GIF's on and off. There is really no alternative that provides that good a transparency!

Besides,

"It turns out that 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."

I've tried it in mozilla in linux and it works perfect. Not tried it with opera and netscape 6 though. I am definite it works in netscape 7 ( including 256 levels transparency ) and prolly IE 6 ( don't have that installed yet ).

Yes; Catalyst has answered my question ; thanks!
but I need more up-to-date information... Any idea if IE 6 / Firebird / Opera 7 supports PNGs?

I think for users in older browsers like Net/IE 4.xxx, if they have the QUICKTIME plugin, the PNGs will automatically load ( yes... and I do believe netscape (only?)uses quicktime cuz when i open a png theres the quicktime logo ).

OOPZ!
"IE5.5+/Win, bless its heart, will, in fact, display a PNG, but it doesn’t natively support alpha transparency. In IE5.5+/Win, the transparent area of your PNG will display at 100% opacity – that is, it won’t be transparent at all."

Looking at the rest of the article, I'm getting a little sick. Just getting a png on a webpage with alpha would need such long workarounds... hmm.. I'll continue some other day; anyway, its getting rather late here....

Bye! [yun]

[Webforumz Staff]

Fire up a page... With a PNG with different levels of transparency and push it. I've got Opera and IE6 and we can trie Firebird too if you like. Shove it up on the web and I'll take a look at least.

[courtjester]

umm.. Well if you want to try it take a look at www.jefcoed.com/schools/HewittHigh/index.htm thats my first site I ever did.. I used transparancies on the homepage.. The one with the principals.. Go for it.. But I am warning you, it'll take a day and a half to load... ohh, and just to let yall know.. a Picture that is 7kb in a JPEG is 315KB in PNG.. a picture that was 25KB in JPEG was 1,233 KB in PNG.... WHat the heck am I doing wrong? cause I can't load 1 meg pictures ... sorry..

[Webforumz Staff]

I don't see any transparent PNGs there....??
And as to their size... I don't know, I've never had that sort of a problem?