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What Is The Future of PNG?

Posted by Hemos on from the life-of-its-own dept.

miladus writes "The GIF patent (held by Unisys) will expire on June 20. C|Net wonders whether that will also mean that PNG "will lose its original reason for being". Remember Burn All GIFs? " My hope would be that at this point PNG can stand on its own technical merits, rather then on ideological merits.

4 of 609 comments (clear)

  1. Re:PNGs by norculf · · Score: -1, Troll

    Your coworkers have shit for brains.

  2. doomed to obscurity by fleener · · Score: -1, Troll

    Very few people use PNG as is. A replacement for GIFs? Sorry, it never was one.

  3. Re:Wrong! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    "You're just lazy if you use GIFs."

    Absolutely right!

    Upside to PNGs: Virtually nothing for most layouts
    Downside to PNGs: Lots more work

    Now, why shouldn't people be lazy?

  4. Re:Wrong! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Did you read the whole thread, or only the posts you agree with?

    The problem is that standard tools (Photoshop) produce PNGs that are larger than GIFs. Small PNGs require the Mac Dood to track down strange and different tools. Furthermore, given the same subset of features, even the optimized PNGs aren't smaller enough to make the difference worthwhile.