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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."
how soon will such functionality be implented in major graphic manipulation programs like Photoshop?
:P
Oh, and yeah, I'm sure someone will make it work with The Gimp, so don't flog me over that detail.
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It's fair to say that most people love PNG images (or at least hate GIFs).
Now that Unisys's patent has expired across the globe, I certainly don't hate GIFs.
Well now, this sounds really nice. I have always wondered why MGN never really took off, but then PNG never really took off either (you all know the MSFT story...). Just never knew this had a big-decoder-problem.
So naturally I was disappointed when Mozilla took out MNG support back then, but this seems to make it better (read: more chances of survival in the real world out there) standard, and that is always a good thing.
One more reason to finally get rid of all them GIFs, even if they are no longer patent-encumbered - the format is still not capable of alpha transparency...
well now that the lempel-ziv-welch algorithm patent has expired, maybe they should look into whether or not this algorithm could be used for a better *PNG format.
Most people don't know what png images are and they probably couldn't care less whether they get png or gif images.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Uh, no. Most people have no freakin' clue about what PNG and GIF are. Only we geeks know or care about the difference.
And speaking as a fellow geek, if you're feeling emotions like "love" and "hate" over freakin' image formats you really need to get out of the house more often.
Java? Flash? I've seen lots of animated gifs in educational contexts -- showing how changing parameters affects a curve, for example. Yes, Java and Flash can be used, although they tend to be sluggish to load and crash browsers not infrequently,
Y'all are missing something. The browser market is dominated by IE, and, if I remember correctly, IE doesn't even support non-animated PNG's perfectly. What are the chances that APNG gets added? And if it doesn't get added, what web designer will use a format that can't be viewed by 93% of their users? I'm not trolling, I'm not dissing Moz, but the reality of the market is there...
The story begins with: "It's fair to say that most people love PNG images (or at least hate GIFs)." No, it's not fair to say that; it's wrong. Most computer users don't even know the difference and don't care as long as they can see the image. Most people don't know about the GIF patent issues and anyways GIF is now free. Plus why hate a file format? If you really want to hate something then hate what Unisys did.
Web developer has been my full-time job since 1995, and I have tried *so many times* to switch to PNG. And every single time, I slowly (and unfortunately) end up reverting back to GIF.
The two reasons that PNGs are unsuitable for large-scale use are:
* MSIE support sucks. It is getting better, but it still sucks (yes, I know this is a Microsoft issue not a PNG issue, but I'm not trying to place blame here.)
* Gamma value variation. Look at a PNG on one browser, and the blue value will match #0000CC, but look in another browser on another OS, and IT WON'T! Talk about maddening... this is one situation where the extra control by having the ability to specify a gamma value is a curse, not a blessing.
Yes, I know there are workarounds for both of thses issues. But the fact that they are both fatal flaws, and both have to be worked around, makes PNGs unusable for every-day use.
The article says it's because it's too big, but that's hard to believe, coming from the Mozilla camp. Does anyone have more details? I've been wondering for a while why this hasn't shown up in any of the free browsers. Also, I wonder how SVG relates to APNG. SVG seems like a great format for distributing scalable and moving things, although it's not a bitmap format.
First off, I know all about the drama surrounding IE's PNG support. Secondly, I think those that gripe about it to Microsoft pretty much gripe in vain (at least for now). Thirdly, at least on my work computer, IE uses Quicktime to render PNG files. This leads me to conclude that we, the concerned few should ask Apple to make Quicktime for Windows support PNG's alpha channels. As we do this, we can ask Apple to add support for this APNG format too.
They'll probably come out with the "WMG" format which you will have to pay for a license to sign your own images. Users that visit your site will contact a Microsoft server and ask if it's okay to decode the images. Only IE will work with this system.
The official press release would be something like "We feel that this new open (to IE) format will provide the much needed protection against web site theft and give necessary control to Microsoft over your own content."
Would it surprise you?
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Sarcasm aside, this is a valid point. If IE doesn't support it, most authors won't use it on their web pages, and there aren't any IE updates scheduled any time soon...
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
These same people also think NASCAR is the greatest thing on earth, work their 9-to-5 blue collar jobs every day, and watch football every weekend. What's your point? News for nerds, and if that doesn't equal stuff that matters to you, then you clearly are wasting your time surfing the wrong site. Maybe you should try this one.
That's not a stupid question at all. If Firefox had a setting (that I knew about) to disable all animation effects by default, I'd enable that feature immediately. More than 90% of animated content out there is crap or worse than crap. 100% of animated effects reduce my reading speed and comprehension. I've asked other people about this, and I seem to suffer this effect more than most people, to the extent that I often set my Firefox font size for inch tall letters so that the majority of the text spills below the aggravating imagery. Sometimes if I can't get the animation away from the text I'm readin, I actually hold one hand over the screen to block out the offending flicker. The few people I know who find this similarly annoying tend to be the exceptional readers. One of my close friends claims he sees every word on the printed page (for book reading) simultaneously, and he moves his eyes back and forth mostly for the purpose of getting the words into proper order for mental comprehension. But he usually knows what the author will claim before he gets there, because he knows what words are coming at the bottom of the page.
For me, there is no "experience" involved in visiting a web page. I go there to suck out the content. I had a jazz musician friend in Montreal who said that he didn't much care if an LP had a gouge the size of the grand canyon, if the performance had "wit" he didn't even hear the clicks and pops. I feel the same way about text. All I'm there to do is discover whether the author has a moment of wit or substance.
What I've learned about reading, serious reading where the aim is not to hear your own thoughts expressed by another person (or believe such), but to encounter thoughts that clash and spark and scrape the paint, to accomplish this the reader must open an expressway of comprehension that bypasses the internal thought police, the slow border crossings with open trunks and snuffling dogs. It seems to me that people who read at the pace of their own internal mind police do not experience the same distress I feel about the visual flickers of animated content: it's only slowing their visual processing down to the same speed their emotional filters were functioning in the first place.
My reading style is that I'm a kind of ambulance chaser: I want the content to strike the rock bottom content of my soul in massive wreckage, trailing ambulances, autopsies, coroner's reports, and sprawling cemeteries full of petty self justifications, RIP.
APNG I can live without.
To be able to say, "I support free and open standards for the Web."
"Proprietary == bad, mm'kay?"
That engine page is actually way more interesting than this slashdot article.
Because JPG is completely inappropiate for screenshots, that's why.
JPG deals *very* badly with straight lines and black/white transitions, both of which are really common in screenshots, like interface elements and black text on a white background. 500KB screenshots mostly happen because people take a screenshot of their background image.