Megan — Wed, 26 Feb 2003 19:57:13 +0000

That's what I meant when I was talking about alpha transparency - it's not supported in IE.

Edit: Sorry, IE/Win

fifeclub — Wed, 26 Feb 2003 19:20:47 +0000

As far as browser compatibility issues, when you guys say that the transparancy can be utilized in certain browsers, do you mean the "variable transparency". I've read that many browsers will allow png transparency but only in an all or nothing manner (per pixel) like GIF89A. I know the current round of browsers all accept png, but do they all accept the variable alpha channel values that allow for good shadows?

An article I found good is http://www.eyewire.com/magazine/columns/sean/png (but it's a few years old so it's wrong on some browser compatibility issues)

Busy — Fri, 21 Feb 2003 20:53:57 +0000

It's the padded cell, keeps deforming me ... the straight jacket doesn't help either

Suzanne — Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:59:05 +0000

Inside the square? But you're so round!

Busy — Fri, 21 Feb 2003 09:48:07 +0000

Sorry my mistake, was thinking inside the square, forgot what the .png could do.
Nice sample site Suzanne - thanks

Megan — Fri, 21 Feb 2003 03:30:27 +0000

Sorry, when I said transparency earlier I was referring to the alpha transparency (since that's one of the main advantages of png.) That page says that the alpha isn't supported by IE/win, correct? Only moz, opera, & ie/mac.

Suzanne — Fri, 21 Feb 2003 02:33:36 +0000

alpha transparencies are still not supported well, but regular transparency (one colour) have been supported for ages in IE (and in Mozilla, but not N4.x).

http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/ is a great test page.

Busy — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:32:44 +0000

The transparency worked in IE5 (don't have IE6).
I remember ages ago testing the file sizes were bigger as well but even with being transparent they are smaller (but I'm not using big images) image1.gif 5.05kb - image1.png 2.75kb (is the munchtech banner)
But bigger images (on the past page) didnt have as much compression image2.gif 12.9kb - image2.png 11kb
The .gif's were compressed before doing this, (saved .gif as .png) so could of had an effect.

The one thing I did notice about file size was whether the .png was interlaced or not, this makes a big difference (best for file size to be not interlaced)

Suzanne — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 17:27:53 +0000

I have found that you can't open a .png just by linking to it in some versions of IE -- it's fine in an .html page, but not on its own.

Megan — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:28:03 +0000

The transparency works in IE now? That's great! The last time I tested it it wasn't. Or does it work in IE 6 and not 5.5? If that's the case then there's enough reason not to use it with transparency. Also, when I did a test awhile back I found that file sizes with png's were larger than gif's, so unless you need to take advantage of the transparency levels it may not be worth it. What did you find in that area?