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so is there any de-facto standard for adding simple animations to PNG?

Yes, and it's called MNG. KHTML (Konqueror and Safari) supports it. Mozilla 1.0 through 1.4 supports it. Though it has been removed from the Mozilla trunk, it'll go back in (b.m.o bug 18574) as soon as Glenn gets done reducing its code footprint. Plug-ins are available for Opera and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

If you consider MNG a bloated disaster, take a look at MNG-LC, which is smaller.

1. Oppose the expansion of software patents to your country, if such patents are not available there now.
2. Insist that standards bodies in which you participate make an an "innovation compatible" (IC) license a requirement for any patents needed to implement a standard.
3. Develop and support software that works with non-patented file formats and network protocols, instead of patent-encumbered ones.

1. simple transparency only, with bad threshold for transparency vs. opacity, and only for palette images; completely fails to render some transparent palette images (e.g., bottom four here], possibly due to filenames with more than one dot(?!); non-palette images are rendered fully opaque against a light gray background; alpha transparency supported if and only if HTML content is rewritten to use Microsoft-specific DirectX extensions to CSS (further caveats for DirectX approach: if the PNG image's width and height attributes are missing, the width and height of the placeholder image will be used instead; if the placeholder image is missing, the browser's stock ``missing-image'' icon will be placed over the PNG)
2. on sRGB (display-gamma 2.2) systems, appears to use display-system gamma of approximately 1.96; colors appear slightly dark
3. only if "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins" security preference enabled; adds unnecessary scrollbars; version 4.0 renders all OBJECTs in nested set, not just outermost
4. especially those created with the "Save" function in Macromedia Fireworks--use "Export" for final PNGs
5. reportedly fixed in version 5.5, and doesn't affect NT or Win2k
6. i.e., those that are simply referenced via links or opened from disk--it can view ones that are inlined on an HTML page via IMG tags just fine, and a registry hack is reported to fix the stand-alone problem
7. i.e., it works on some systems but not on others, and it's not directly related to running NT vs. Windows 9x but may have something to do with other PNG-capable viewers being installed

What, you mean like a petition to Instead, round up as many people as you can to petition Microsoft to get them to support the PNG format as well as Mozilla does.

What, you mean a petition like Aaron Adam's petition for Proper PNG Support in Internet Explorer for Windows, as endorsed by the likes of Zeldman (designer extraordinaire), A List Apart (who have an article describing various workarounds, which are simple but ultimately impractical), Eric Meyer (CSS guru - excellent books BTW), Owen Briggs (the Noodle Incident), and the like? I'd highly recommend that you take the time to sign it, it'll only take a few seconds...

I'd also encourage you to give Microsoft some product feedback (no registration or e-mail required) on IE/win's crappy PNG support ;)

As for resources describing each browser's level of support, check out this excellent listing of each web browsers' PNG support over at Gregg Roelofses LibPNG site.

Cheers,

ManxStef

What, you mean like a petition to Instead, round up as many people as you can to petition Microsoft to get them to support the PNG format as well as Mozilla does.

What, you mean a petition like Aaron Adam's petition for Proper PNG Support in Internet Explorer for Windows, as endorsed by the likes of Zeldman (designer extraordinaire), A List Apart (who have an article describing various workarounds, which are simple but ultimately impractical), Eric Meyer (CSS guru - excellent books BTW), Owen Briggs (the Noodle Incident), and the like? I'd highly recommend that you take the time to sign it, it'll only take a few seconds...

I'd also encourage you to give Microsoft some product feedback (no registration or e-mail required) on IE/win's crappy PNG support ;)

As for resources describing each browser's level of support, check out this excellent listing of each web browsers' PNG support over at Gregg Roelofses LibPNG site.

Cheers,

ManxStef

Erm... speaking out of your ass, are you? PNG support in Netscape since 4.04, even if it doesn't support transparency at all, qualifies as PNG support in Netscape 4.

Besides, with content-negociation and other technologies, it's possible to serve pngs to supporting browsers and gifs to the others.

The biggest problem actually comes from half-supporting browsers, not non-supporting browsers. A browser that can't handle PNGs will display the alt tag (or a gif, if you use content-negotiation), which isn't too bad. A half supporting browser will take the PNG and screw up everything. It's not as bad with PNG as it is with CSS, but on the web, no support is often better than partial support.

IE had partial support for PNGs in 1997, and improved support in 2001 and 2002.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#brows ers

• PNGs may be great, but nobody uses them
• PNGs never caught on because IE doesn't support them
• PNGs will never catch on until M$ supports all their features.
• I can't get PNGs to work

Of course, if you create a 24-bit PNG to compete with an 8-bit GIF, the GIF will be smaller. Otherwise the PNG will be significantly smaller. If you use gamma correction in the PNG, weird things can happen when people have their gamma misconfigured.

In my own tests a year ago, IE 5.5 on Windows and Mac, as well as Netscape 7 and Mozilla (on Windows, Mac and Linux), all browsers did just fine with 8-bit images, 24-bit images, as well as alpha transparency. That last one is really, really cool looking and everyone should try it.

My theory is that few people use PNGs because most of the HTML books out there recommend GIFs because that's what the authors learned and nobody has bothered to correct them.

More info:

• Browser support
• PNG test suite, to see if your browser works well for PNGs. If you're using IE, don't take my word that PNGs work
• PNG home page

• PNGs may be great, but nobody uses them
• PNGs never caught on because IE doesn't support them
• PNGs will never catch on until M$ supports all their features.
• I can't get PNGs to work

Of course, if you create a 24-bit PNG to compete with an 8-bit GIF, the GIF will be smaller. Otherwise the PNG will be significantly smaller. If you use gamma correction in the PNG, weird things can happen when people have their gamma misconfigured.

In my own tests a year ago, IE 5.5 on Windows and Mac, as well as Netscape 7 and Mozilla (on Windows, Mac and Linux), all browsers did just fine with 8-bit images, 24-bit images, as well as alpha transparency. That last one is really, really cool looking and everyone should try it.

My theory is that few people use PNGs because most of the HTML books out there recommend GIFs because that's what the authors learned and nobody has bothered to correct them.

More info:

• Browser support
• PNG test suite, to see if your browser works well for PNGs. If you're using IE, don't take my word that PNGs work
• PNG home page

• PNGs may be great, but nobody uses them
• PNGs never caught on because IE doesn't support them
• PNGs will never catch on until M$ supports all their features.
• I can't get PNGs to work

Of course, if you create a 24-bit PNG to compete with an 8-bit GIF, the GIF will be smaller. Otherwise the PNG will be significantly smaller. If you use gamma correction in the PNG, weird things can happen when people have their gamma misconfigured.

In my own tests a year ago, IE 5.5 on Windows and Mac, as well as Netscape 7 and Mozilla (on Windows, Mac and Linux), all browsers did just fine with 8-bit images, 24-bit images, as well as alpha transparency. That last one is really, really cool looking and everyone should try it.

My theory is that few people use PNGs because most of the HTML books out there recommend GIFs because that's what the authors learned and nobody has bothered to correct them.

More info:

• Browser support
• PNG test suite, to see if your browser works well for PNGs. If you're using IE, don't take my word that PNGs work
• PNG home page

The PNG saving features are notoriously broken and incomplete, and create files larger than needed, especially in the 'save for web' part.

Try using the SuperPNG plugin instead, it's a drop-in replacement for Photoshops PNG save features and fixes many problems.

I don't know about other browsers, but MNG support has been dropped from Mozilla in recent builds.

I'm not sure what recent build you're using, but my recent build of Mozilla 1.4 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030530) supports MNG just fine from this test page - and it's only a couple of weeks old.

Yes

Read the other comments on this page. PNG Animation exists, and is called MNG.

Any PNG image is a valid MNG object, therefore creating MNG animations is a trivial task.

Alas browser support is non-existant except in certain builds of Mozilla, or by use of a plug-in/ActiveX component.

large file size- much larger than gif or jpg

-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 27382 Jun 9 10:12 states_imgmap.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 23176 Jun 9 13:28 states_imgmap.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 22619 Jun 9 13:29 states_imgmap_pngcrush.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 21404 Jun 9 13:31 states_imgmap_pngout.png

-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 342508 May 31 02:22 grab_orig.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 136461 Jun 9 13:41 grab.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 97538 Jun 9 13:40 grab.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 95336 Jun 9 13:42 grab_pngcrush.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 87168 Jun 9 13:44 grab_pngout.png

poor standardization

little exposure

large file size- much larger than gif or jpg

-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 27382 Jun 9 10:12 states_imgmap.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 23176 Jun 9 13:28 states_imgmap.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 22619 Jun 9 13:29 states_imgmap_pngcrush.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 21404 Jun 9 13:31 states_imgmap_pngout.png

-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 342508 May 31 02:22 grab_orig.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 136461 Jun 9 13:41 grab.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 97538 Jun 9 13:40 grab.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 95336 Jun 9 13:42 grab_pngcrush.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky None 87168 Jun 9 13:44 grab_pngout.png

poor standardization

little exposure

poor standardization- alpha in particular is different accross platforms and browsers (IE is the worst offender here)

Well, then you just use MNG if you need animation. And if you read the linked page, MNG is superior to animated GIFs in a number of ways, one of which is better compression. Another advantage to MNG is it's not necessarily tied to one image format. The individual images can be stored in either PNG or JPEG format.

Personally, I think it's a good thing to have several image formats available with wide support in all browsers. The reason for this is it allows developers to choose which format provides the best results for what they're doing. This means which ones look better and compress better for a certain image. It's definitely a good thing that the patent on GIF is expiring, but it's also a good thing to make sure that PNG doesn't go away, either.

I think this is just considered an update from the PNG spec 1.0 to spec 1.2 (or, maybe 1.3). The PNG home site mentions version 1.1 (with color correction) & 1.2 (with international text). The text in the linked recommendation mentions that it's the same text as the ISO standard (except for "cover page and boilerplate differences"); the PNG news page mentions that the two announcements are related, but without mentioning why they're related. It mentions "errata and clarifications" from PNG spec 1.0.

Bleh. Anyway. It's not about PNG 2.0 or anything. If you want animation, you still have to use MNG.

I think this is just considered an update from the PNG spec 1.0 to spec 1.2 (or, maybe 1.3). The PNG home site mentions version 1.1 (with color correction) & 1.2 (with international text). The text in the linked recommendation mentions that it's the same text as the ISO standard (except for "cover page and boilerplate differences"); the PNG news page mentions that the two announcements are related, but without mentioning why they're related. It mentions "errata and clarifications" from PNG spec 1.0.

Bleh. Anyway. It's not about PNG 2.0 or anything. If you want animation, you still have to use MNG.

I think this is just considered an update from the PNG spec 1.0 to spec 1.2 (or, maybe 1.3). The PNG home site mentions version 1.1 (with color correction) & 1.2 (with international text). The text in the linked recommendation mentions that it's the same text as the ISO standard (except for "cover page and boilerplate differences"); the PNG news page mentions that the two announcements are related, but without mentioning why they're related. It mentions "errata and clarifications" from PNG spec 1.0.

Bleh. Anyway. It's not about PNG 2.0 or anything. If you want animation, you still have to use MNG.

Gecko has had support for this
for some time, but Opera 6 was missing it.

Wrong. Opera 6 had full alpha channel support for PNG. PNG supporting browsers.

1. It already has, at least for me. All of my CDs are ripped to Ogg Vorbis, primarily because I know that I'll be able to play them in perpetuity, thanks to the licensing issues.
2. For the general population, the sad answer is that it probably never will. The lack of portable players is often cited as the barrier to widespread adoption. But while I'm sure it's a factor, I don't think it would matter anyway. After all, the world is still using GIFs, despite the widespread availability of superior alternatives. The only exception would be if Fraunhofer go nuts with their licensing demands. I suspect on of the reasons PNG hasn't displaced GIF entirely has been that Unisys asked for sensible amounts when licensing.

And anyone designing a public web site and willing to discard 10% of customers [by abandoning GIF for PNG] is also a fringe player.

Ten percent? I haven't had a single complaint about people not being able to view the images of my PNG-based site. The fact is that Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 and later, Netscape 4.5 and later, and all versions of Mozilla and Konqueror can display PNG images at least as well as they display still GIF images. The biggest thing I can see that keeps PNG from replacing GIF is that IE does not support PNG's animated cousin out of the box, making it unsuitable for animated advertisements.

PNG is pronounced like the duck.

...and to follow on, they were talking about implementing it for IE4!

On the other hand, our buds at Microsoft recognized the benefits of PNG and apparently embraced it wholeheartedly. They have not only made it the native image format of the Office97 application suite but have also repeatedly promised to put it into Internet Explorer (theoretically by the time of the 4.0 betas--we'll see about that). Assuming they do, Netscape is almost certain to follow suit. (See? Microsoft is good for something!) At that point PNG should enjoy a real burst of WWW interest and usage.

"better compression than GIF, typically 5% to 25% (but often 40% or 50% better on tiny images)"

Note that for transmission of finished truecolor images--especially photographic ones--JPEG is almost always a better choice. Although JPEG's lossy compression can introduce visible artifacts, these can be minimized, and the savings in file size even at high quality levels is much better than is generally possible with a lossless format like PNG.

Yes - the PNG format. it's free, works as well(if not better than Jpeg), and all the browsers support it.
We've been using PNG for the past 3 years for our projects without any problems or hitches.
Take a look at the PNG Home Site

quote: "Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer."

Just to point out, the .mng works just find under Konqueror 3.1.0.

For more information on MNG, and a list of supported browsers, follow this link

There is no reason left but MSIE to use GIFs.

Two reaons:

1. As you mention, MSIE is broken and doesn't correctly handle PNGs.

2. PNGs don't support animations. GIF does. PNG's sister format, MNG is supposed to solve this, but MNG support is flaky at best in many popular browsers. It doesn't help that the reference implementation, according to the MNG site, "implements almost all of the MNG spec for decoding".

Of course personally, I think there are too many animated graphics, but they are popular. MNG either needs to build widespread support, or we're stuck with GIF's for the immediate future.

Still, I do my part and am moving to PNGs as much as possible. Every site that uses PNGs and looks bad in IE in incentive for Microsoft to fix their crap browser.

GIF possibly patented? Well, now we have .png, which is also a superior format.

It's not superior if nobody can view it. Among popular web browsers, only KHTML-based (Konqueror; Safari) and Gecko-based (Mozilla; Netscape) browsers can display the MNG format. The most popular web browser supports GIF animations but not PNG animations out of the box. Thus, to reach the largest audiences, web sites will still serve animated advertisement banners as GIF instead of MNG.

GIF possibly patented? Well, now we have .png, which is also a superior format.

It's not superior if nobody can view it. Among popular web browsers, only KHTML-based (Konqueror; Safari) and Gecko-based (Mozilla; Netscape) browsers can display the MNG format. The most popular web browser supports GIF animations but not PNG animations out of the box. Thus, to reach the largest audiences, web sites will still serve animated advertisement banners as GIF instead of MNG.

You are familiar, I'm sure with some of the efforts such as Portable Net Graphics format?

PNG is not suitable for replacing all uses of GIF because Microsoft Internet Explorer, the web browser used by the vast majority of visitors to Google, does not natively read the animated variant of PNG that would be required under a "burn all GIFs" policy for delivering the animated advertisements that pay for the expenses of a web site.

You are familiar, I'm sure with some of the efforts such as Portable Net Graphics format?

PNG is not suitable for replacing all uses of GIF because Microsoft Internet Explorer, the web browser used by the vast majority of visitors to Google, does not natively read the animated variant of PNG that would be required under a "burn all GIFs" policy for delivering the animated advertisements that pay for the expenses of a web site.

You are familiar, I'm sure with some of the efforts such as Portable Net Graphics format?

PNG is not suitable for replacing all uses of GIF because Microsoft Internet Explorer, the web browser used by the vast majority of visitors to Google, does not natively read the animated variant of PNG that would be required under a "burn all GIFs" policy for delivering the animated advertisements that pay for the expenses of a web site.

God i hate PNG - it never shows up in MSIE - though i hear it should be able to do that, anybody know how?

Install Mozilla? ;)

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html

Check here, scroll down for the MS support. Ironically, for the Mac it works flawlessly. IE for Windows should support them ok, just alpha is completely borked. We use pngs on my sites as long as they aren't transparent.

When IE gets alpha fixed, I think I'll die of shock.

Basic PNG can store images with up to 48 bits of depth without a problem, and the basic compression algorithm is what's used in gz - it's deliberately patent-unencumbered.

Also, the statements of some slimy money-grubbers to the contrary, the jpeg compression scheme is patent-unencumbered as well, and the JNG format (one of the PNG family) allows 12 bits per channel per pixel.

See the technical specs on libpng.org for more details.

I have to ask - you - why is PNG bad? Really - I'd like to know what you think is bad about it? What would you suggest is better? Windoze BMP for it's small file size maybe?!

Info on PNG

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.

IE 5.x/Mac has better PNG support than IE 6/Windows. And Netscape 4.x can support basic pngs (the type the same as gifs, 8-bit, etc). Mozilla's PNG support is awesome, and Opera also has pretty darn good PNG support as well. There is no reason anyone should have to use .gifs at this point.

See http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html for a status of PNG support in browsers.

As for PNG, see this reference for the correct pronounciation.

For GIF, I submit that your pronounciation is correct. However, the poster did not ask for the correct pronounciation, he asked how the readers of slashdot pronounced it. I pronounce it just like I said in the other post, as do many others. So congrats on being halfway right I suppose.

You could try using png format images. The libpng group provides a browser support reference.

For the images that require animation, you could look into the MNG/JNG format. A reference is available here. Support does not seem to very widespread but that may not matter depending on the intended audience for your application.

You could try using png format images. The libpng group provides a browser support reference.

For the images that require animation, you could look into the MNG/JNG format. A reference is available here. Support does not seem to very widespread but that may not matter depending on the intended audience for your application.

"Web browsers don't support" is not an excuse anymore

As you correctly point out, that's true for non-animated images. However, what do you propose for simple animations? What if animated .gif is the only way I can get advertisers to buy space on my site? Is there a way to hold off Unisys for the last nine months of the life of U.S. Patent 4,558,302? Mozilla (and Netscape 7) is the only popular browser to support Multiple-image Network Graphics, the animated extension to PNG and free alternative to animated GIF images. Excluding IE users is not an option. Or should I try to find (or write) a tool to convert animated .gif to .swf?

unless you have alpha (specifically multiple levels of transparency), which some of the older browsers didn't handle so well.

Even IE 6 doesn't handle alpha very well. (Mozilla does.) However, any PNG image converted from a still GIF image will work fine.

Clearly slashdot has dropped gif's for jpegs.

Not to be a stickler, but the freely usable (and W3C-recommended) replacement for GIF is PNG. Like GIF, PNG is non-lossy compression. JPEG is lossy.

I'll be quiet now.

So how will this impact the whole GIF vs. PNG thing?

GIF's continue to be bad; PNG's continue to be good

Ignoring the philosophical reasons, PNG's are better:

1. (In my experience) PNG's are smaller
2. They support a variety of compression standards (see pngcrush)
3. They support a larger number of colors. GIF's used a 8 bit palette; PNG's can do truecolor, greyscale or 8 bit palette
4. They support animation (through the related MNG standard)
5. They support transparency through alpha channels. Alpha channels are a very good thing that I could rant and rave about (but I won't ;)
6. They support gamma correction
7. They support more intelligent interlacing than GIF's

If you intend to quote someone, then you should actually quote them, rather than "make up whatever you want."

The actual quote is "Unless IE (for Windows) supports it right" with the keyword being right.

For more information on what IE support is lacking, please visit libpng.org.

I'm thinking about using png exclusively. If the content is good enough, I'm sure many IE users would make the effort to swtich.