Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Adds MNG Support
HoserHead writes: "For those who are really worried about the Unisys patent on LZW compression in GIF files, the answer may soon be at hand: MNG is on the way. PNG has a brother in MNG, which is the free alternative to animated GIFs. Tim Rowley has recently sent Mozilla hackers a checkin of preliminary MNG support, as can be read here (Necko/Imglib section). Now, all that's needed is MNG export support for the GIMP!"
If you are thinking about killing animation check out bug 21623.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Sure, all that's needed for it to take off is support in Mozilla and the GIMP! Then it'll be the huge success that PNG has been.... right?
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I hoped Unisys' plot to destroy banner ads was going to work...;( K
I know you're all dying to read it...
http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/ spec/draft-mng-lc.html
is it just me, or is it a LOT easier to program a GIF decoder heh.... ah well, the advance of modern technology blah blah.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
The official MNG page is here, and this is a list of applications which do support MNG. As the article mentions, the GIMP is notable by its absence.
This contains some interesting info on the MNG format, and this shows how MNG compares to other image formats.
I guess I have to admit that every now and then I run across an animated GIF that is actually interesting or amusing...
:-)
But as a general rule, I find animated images to be annoying and repulsive. They tend to be distracting, and draw my attention away from the real reason I have the web page on my screen - the content.
Every day, I wish that my browser had an option to disable animated images. Perhaps there could be a menu icon I could click to enable them on the rare occasion that I really wanted to see the other frames. Now THAT feature would be a major plus to Mozilla. Chances are, I will some day go into the code and add it myself (THANK YOU, MOZILLA for the source code
Honestly, how many of you really enjoy those crappy, animated banner ads on your screen? Is this going to be an *improvement* for Mozilla?
A dingo ate my sig...
Someone's tagline once said "cutting and pasting from the linked Slashdot article is not Informative... it's Redundant". I agree.
I would rather see some discussion more on-topic, such as why this is good, or bad... not "for your convenience" cut and pasting from obvious links.
I'm glad that people are excited about this format. I hope that in 5 years it becomes a well-used standard. PNG is just starting to catch on in the graphics industry, although it's nowhere near as well supported as say TIFF.
And that's too bad.. you always know PNG video frames are lossless, and they're lots smaller than pure uncompressed stuff.
More support than GIMP is needed I am afraid. This is needed in things like Broadcast 2000, where it might make an impact.
Given that Slashdot and a million other websites continue to use GIF *how many* ? years after PNG, I think MNG will take just as long to gain acceptance.
But Mozilla MNG support's still nice, for small niche websites where you know the audience is capable of viewing it without a Netscape 4 plugin and IE control.
Actually, the signature used in PNG/MNG is a *very* cool hack. By including both the LF and CR ASCII bytes, a properly constructed PNG/MNG decoder can determine whether or not the image file was misconverted as it passed through different computer systems than the one it was created in (ie. the file might have been sent in text mode by accident).