Slashdot Mirror
Presenting APNG: Like MNG, Only Better
An anonymous reader writes "It's fair to say that most people love PNG images (or at least hate GIFs). However, the one advantage GIFs have over PNGs is that they can be animated. There is, of course, an animated version of PNG, MNG, but few programs can view these images (mainly because the MNG decoder is so large that the likes of Mozilla refuse to include it). But there may be an answer coming: Vladimir Vukicevic and Stuart 'Pavlov' Parmenter (of Mozilla fame) have put together a specification for APNG (Animated Portable Network Graphics)." (Read more below.)
"Unlike MNG, APNG is not a separate file format, but rather an extension to PNG. Thus, APNG images are just normal PNG images (with the .png extension) but can be animated. The system is fully backwards-compatable, so any program that can open a PNG image will be able to open an APNG image (though non-APNG viewers will only show the first frame). Vitally, the decoder just adds an extra few kilobytes onto a standard PNG decoder. APNG support is in the process of being checked into Mozilla. Hopefully, other programs will follow suit."
IE won't support it until 2012, and even then, it'll only support half the features.
Haven't they realised that animated GIFs only serve to irritate?
the MNG decoder is so large that the likes of Mozilla refuse to include it
Yeah, and a damn good thing too, otherwise we'd have a browser that's so huge and bloated that...
Nevermind...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Microsoft recognizes that a new animated image format was needed (after seeing it mentioned on /.). As such they have announced the release of a new standard, Microsoft Extended Sequential Series (MESS).
MESS will be incorporated into Longhorn and will be one of the major enhancements to the Microsoft operating system. The MESS graphics format will permit content providers to render highly complex images on a users system. The MESS format allows use of Active X components which permits all kinds of interesting effects on a users system.
When asked about using existing standards executives at Microsoft responded that no other standard in this area exists. Patents have been applied for covering this novel concept and will be agressively defended. Anyone trying to duplicate the intelectual property of Microsoft would be better off using MESS as long as they pay the royalties due Microsoft or they may find them selves in an even bigger MESS.
Executives were then asked about possible security implications of the new MESS protocol. Executives replied that security is a number one priority and that an updated SP3 patch is currently in the works that will address all security issues. The only thing holding up SP3 release is final release of SP2 patch 1 that is needed to address security issues caused by various linux distributions.