http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3007862.stm

By noting that GIF really sucks, regardless of patent encumbrances, and by making a few PNGs, MNGs, and JPEGs.

I don't know, I'm not a JPEG fan. And knowing you and your aversion to proprietary BMPs, I'm suprised you would like PNGs at the moment

So yes, I like GIFs.

Yeah, GIF sucks. 8-bit color is definitely not good enough for pr0n.

Yeah, GIF sucks. 8-bit color is definitely not good enough for pr0n.

I remember the days of GIF pr0n.

I'm a PNG and JPEG man. I really love PNG for my photography, so I can provide 24 bit, lossless versions of pictures easily. JPEG is good for providing nice small lossy versions of my photography.

Keep in mind, I would rather send a 5MB PNG, than a 12MB RAW or 15MB TIFF :P

knowing you and your aversion to proprietary BMPs, I'm suprised you would like PNGs at the moment

????

It's just my impression that PNGs are still not as widely viewable as other formats. I like the format, and look forward to using it over GIFs, but for the meantime, while people are still using older Netscape and IE browsers, I simply cannot.

JPEGs are also terrible at compressing plain graphics. I always get terrible artifacts if I don't spend way too much time getting rid of them.

I've not seen a browser in quite some time that couldn't view PNGs. And, to be honest, as much as HTML tries to be backwards compatible (even if the authors circumvent that as much as possible), there are so many new technologies in web pages these days that a browser that can't display PNGs probably can't display a lot of other stuff, either.

MNG, on the other hand, is still widely unimplemented, and animations are the only area where GIF holds the upper hand, but, even then, solely based on wide availability.

And JPEGs aren't intended to compress graphics. It's ``Joint Photographic Experts Group'', after all.

But neither format is proprietary. Proprietary means that the format is not documented and/or is prevented from being freely used by legal means. Both JPEGs and PNGs are non-proprietary. Lack of wide usage (if that were the case) doesn't change that fact. It makes them less useful, but that's a different story.

True, true. Well, I've got IE6 at home and it seems to be incapable of displaying PNGs. I'm hoping they fix that soon.

Nope. IE6 can display PNG files.

IE6 can display PNG files.

...although it doesn't grok alpha-blending, it just clamps the alpha channel to "0 or 1" transparency. Mind you, GIFs only have transparency too, not alpha.

Peter

Maybe it can, but mine doesn't I can't remember, but there's a problem that some computers are unable to view them. I'll check again, but last time I looked I was not able to see them.