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MNG includes the super duper cool JNG

JNG test-suite

If PNG is so great why doesn't it support animation? And don't say MNG, because not even my fancy open source web browser supports them yet. JNG doesn't seem to be supported by my fancy browser either.

If PNG is so great why doesn't it support animation? And don't say MNG, because not even my fancy open source web browser supports them yet. JNG doesn't seem to be supported by my fancy browser either.

you may restore MNG support with these: [...]

No, these plug-ins will not restore support for MNG in Mozilla. They will only add a different way to include MNG using the EMBED tag. This is different from native support using the standard IMG tag.

Have a look at these two pages, providing support for Mozilla and Firebird:

• MNG XPI for Mozilla (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Solaris, OS/2)
• MNG Support for FireBird (Windows)

The second page contains a test image using IMG, EMBED and OBJECT. With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can see all three versions of the animation. With the plug-ins that you are linking to, you will probably not be able see the first one (which is the one that most web designers should be using). I haven't tried Mozilla 1.5 yet and I doubt that I will upgrade because of these MNG problems, but expect that none of the animations will be displayed with 1.5.

With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can also see all the images on the Opossum demo page, showing how JNG compresses better than GIF and provides a much better quality (full color and true transparency instead of 1-bit "all or nothing" transparency). I can also see various other test cases for MNG without any problems. I suppose that Mozilla 1.5 will fail these tests.

you may restore MNG support with these: [...]

No, these plug-ins will not restore support for MNG in Mozilla. They will only add a different way to include MNG using the EMBED tag. This is different from native support using the standard IMG tag.

Have a look at these two pages, providing support for Mozilla and Firebird:

• MNG XPI for Mozilla (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Solaris, OS/2)
• MNG Support for FireBird (Windows)

The second page contains a test image using IMG, EMBED and OBJECT. With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can see all three versions of the animation. With the plug-ins that you are linking to, you will probably not be able see the first one (which is the one that most web designers should be using). I haven't tried Mozilla 1.5 yet and I doubt that I will upgrade because of these MNG problems, but expect that none of the animations will be displayed with 1.5.

With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can also see all the images on the Opossum demo page, showing how JNG compresses better than GIF and provides a much better quality (full color and true transparency instead of 1-bit "all or nothing" transparency). I can also see various other test cases for MNG without any problems. I suppose that Mozilla 1.5 will fail these tests.

you may restore MNG support with these: [...]

No, these plug-ins will not restore support for MNG in Mozilla. They will only add a different way to include MNG using the EMBED tag. This is different from native support using the standard IMG tag.

Have a look at these two pages, providing support for Mozilla and Firebird:

• MNG XPI for Mozilla (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Solaris, OS/2)
• MNG Support for FireBird (Windows)

The second page contains a test image using IMG, EMBED and OBJECT. With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can see all three versions of the animation. With the plug-ins that you are linking to, you will probably not be able see the first one (which is the one that most web designers should be using). I haven't tried Mozilla 1.5 yet and I doubt that I will upgrade because of these MNG problems, but expect that none of the animations will be displayed with 1.5.

With version 1.4 of Mozilla, I can also see all the images on the Opossum demo page, showing how JNG compresses better than GIF and provides a much better quality (full color and true transparency instead of 1-bit "all or nothing" transparency). I can also see various other test cases for MNG without any problems. I suppose that Mozilla 1.5 will fail these tests.

> Also a big problem is the fact that Apache and various other servers don't include the proper MIME type for .wmv files

Mozilla mozdev ForceContentType project to the rescue...

And while we're at it, add to your Apache mime.types:

Per: libmng

image/png png
image/x-jng jng
video/x-mng mng

Per: MIME Type Settings for Windows Media Services

application/x-ms-wmz wmz
application/x-ms-wmd wmd
audio/x-ms-wma wma
audio/x-ms-wax wax
video/x-ms-asf asf asx
video/x-ms-wmv wmv
video/x-ms-wvx wvx
video/x-ms-wm wm
video/x-ms-wmx wmx

and:

video/x-msvideo avi

Because Microsoft Internet Explorer does not come with a MNG viewer, the vast majority of home users of the World Wide Web cannot see MNG images.

See MNG4IE, an ActiveX control for viewing MNG in Microsoft Internet Explorer by Jason Summers, which installation is a simple matter of clicking the right link. There's also MNG Plug-in by Jason Summers. I don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer (I use Mozilla, which doesn't have such problems), but I know that there are actually many different ways of using MNG in that browser (like using a QuickTime MNG component for example). You can find out more informations on MNG and libmng web sites.

Of course, since the libmng license "specifically permit[s], without fee, and encourage[s] the use of this source code as a component to supporting the MNG and JNG file format in commercial products," there is absolutely no excuse why libmng shouldn't be used natively by Microsoft Internet Explorer. Of course, a detailed specification of the MNG format is freely available, so anyone can support MNG even without using libmng, which makes it absolutely unacceptable to not support MNG in any modern web browser. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer I would suggest you sending a feature request, or even a bug report, asking them to add native MNG support.

And is there any way to convert XCF (GIMP's format) to MNG?

convert file.xcf file.mng

Use ImageMagick, which is, in my opinion, the best "robust collection of tools and libraries (...) to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 87 major formats)." You can also write

convert -delay 100 frame*.png anim.mng

and make a MNG animation anim.mng from individual frames frame01.png, frame02.png, etc. That way you don't have to use multilayer file format as your input. ImageMagick is great for such uses.

Because Microsoft Internet Explorer does not come with a MNG viewer, the vast majority of home users of the World Wide Web cannot see MNG images.

See MNG4IE, an ActiveX control for viewing MNG in Microsoft Internet Explorer by Jason Summers, which installation is a simple matter of clicking the right link. There's also MNG Plug-in by Jason Summers. I don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer (I use Mozilla, which doesn't have such problems), but I know that there are actually many different ways of using MNG in that browser (like using a QuickTime MNG component for example). You can find out more informations on MNG and libmng web sites.

Of course, since the libmng license "specifically permit[s], without fee, and encourage[s] the use of this source code as a component to supporting the MNG and JNG file format in commercial products," there is absolutely no excuse why libmng shouldn't be used natively by Microsoft Internet Explorer. Of course, a detailed specification of the MNG format is freely available, so anyone can support MNG even without using libmng, which makes it absolutely unacceptable to not support MNG in any modern web browser. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer I would suggest you sending a feature request, or even a bug report, asking them to add native MNG support.

And is there any way to convert XCF (GIMP's format) to MNG?

convert file.xcf file.mng

Use ImageMagick, which is, in my opinion, the best "robust collection of tools and libraries (...) to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 87 major formats)." You can also write

convert -delay 100 frame*.png anim.mng

and make a MNG animation anim.mng from individual frames frame01.png, frame02.png, etc. That way you don't have to use multilayer file format as your input. ImageMagick is great for such uses.

the biggest browser of all, Internet Explorer, has broken alpha support! That's one of the biggest reasons why GIF isn't dead yet.

IE 5.x and later correctly support binary alpha channels in indexed PNG images. It just has problems with the deeper alpha channels used in grayscale and true-color images. Given that transparent GIF images are also indexed and also use binary alpha, I don't see any difference between IE's transparent PNG support and IE's transparent still GIF support that would preclude use of PNG images in web site graphics.

On the other hand, unlike Mozilla, even IE 6 does not support animated PNG images, which are called MNG. This is the real reason why PNG hasn't taken off on the web, because it can't be used to deliver animated advertisements.

PNG doesn't support animation, but MNG does.

Only GIF supports animation

Not entirely. MNG is an animated variant of PNG, and already widely supported (e.g. by anything using Qt, such as Konqueror).

No reason whatsoever to use gifs for anything, unless you're worried about legacy browsers.

PNG's not superior in every way:
The other reason GIF is still around is AnimGIF. Yes, sane people hate the damn things, but porn sites and banner adders love them.

Now, I know mozilla and konqueror can be persuaded to support MNG, the PNG superset that's a worthy replacement of AnimGIFs, as well as being a decent lossless animation format, but, when I last used windows, IE didn't like 'em. So people still use AnimGIFs for cheap effects.

The linux port of RealSoft (very cool raytracer) is supposedly to be commercially released soon. See realsoft.

Old Amiga people may recognise Realsoft as the makers of Real3D, an amiga raytacer that excelled at solid modelling and keyframe animation - it's especially good at glasses, liquids and crystals, since the light beams are modelled going through the whole material, rather than just surface effects, so you get real-looking stuff like caustics, working magnifying lenses, etc...

The new Realsoft version looks very, very cool...

For 2D static work, photogenics has been available for some time - it's really best for orignal composition, rather than image processing, and is, once again, a modernised version of an old amiga application. GIMP (and photoshop) both suck for orignal 2D work, IMHO. (then again, they both started out as "image manipulation" tools rather than bitmap-painting packages, and I did learn Amiga paint tools first...).

I agree that the state of 2D animation on linux isn't great - although, at least, we now have a decent lossless animation file format that (a) is open and (b) doesn't suck, in the form of the MNG superset of PNG - see libmng

I'll admit up front that I haven't read the article - the comments already posted about it tell me that it's probably a waste of time. The theme, apparently, is that "geeks" are preventing the internet from being a spiffy, flashy experience. Obviously, that's ignorant foolishness. Not only would getting geeks out of the 'net not make it prettier, it would prevent the continued development of the "Rich Experience®" that the marketroids are pushing...:

• MNG for animated graphics
  
• PNG for still images
• Ogg Vorbis for sound and music
• Icecast for "Internet Radio"
• PHP for dynamic web page generation
• (Not to mention PERL for the same sort of thing!)
• The Infrastructure to deliver all this stuff affordably in the first place (too many links to post! OS's, servers, etc...)

And I'm certain there are plenty more examples people could add to this list...

(Off the "AltaVista" topic, but still about IP...)

Unisys (I think) owned the patent and was going to try and charge for every GIF out there.

Specifically, I believe it was a patent on the compression algorithm used - technically, you can use GIF's without worrying about patent issues if you either have them uncompressed or use some other compression method. Problem there is that uncompressed GIF's are naturally huge, and I suspect it would take forever to get all the gif-reading programs (browsers, etc.) to implement the "alternate compression".

Of course, that's what .png's are for. If mng ever catches on (Mozilla/Netscape 6+ and Konqueror already support it, and I suspect if Gnome's browser doesn't already, it will very soon), we'll finally have a replacement for animated GIF's, too.

The big question on my mind, though, is:
Unisys' patent runs out next year, as I recall. When it does, will everybody run back to .GIF and animated .GIF, or can .PNG and .MNG catch on and take over anyway?

I don't know, to me asking for Linux to be a Windows software platform is like asking for a VTOL jet with four-wheel drive....

On the other hand, I suspect that deep down it isn't "Windows Applications", specifically, that you 'need' and want, but rather applications that do the same thing at least as well, and in a similar manner to and compatible with the Windows versions (especially, to be blunt ,games and easier-to-set-up hardware accelerated 3D, and more support for the media formats (e.g. 'WMF') that Microsoft is force-feeding everyone through their present control of the market [in my opinion]). This I can certainly agree with.

Widely available good replacements for proprietary formats will hopefully become more common. I can't afford 'flash' authoring utilities (and I don't think they're available for Linux anyway), but would love to see some progress with the '.mng over .ogg' concept that someone mentioned some time back, for example.