Re: TECH: PNG files

Quoth Paul Bennett:
> Pablo writes:
> >>>>>>
> Does your software support PNG files? That is, can
> your browser or favourite graphics viewing program
> display PNGs?
> <<<<<<
>
> The "big two" browsers (IE and NS) both support PNG in the most recent
> couple of incarnations, which covers you for the vast majority of
> platforms in use.  Users of (eg) Kaldera Webspider or Lynx may get
> left out, but being a confirmed Netscape addict, I tend to laugh and
> point at such people anyway, so what do I care :-)
Caveat: while NS and IE support _much_ of the PNG format, they don't
support _all_ of it; IE doesn't have any support in its Mac and Win3.1
versions, netscape lacks gamma correction, and transparency is limited
in both (not present at all in NS, and binary in IE).  That probably
means it's good enough to be usable until the browsers catch up, but I
thought I'd mention it.

> As for software, I heartily recommend JASC Paint Shop Pro to all
> Windoze users.  It's shareware, and the gap between things like
> Photoshop and PSP is lessening with each passing release.  PSP has
> always been way ahead of the crowd when it comes to reading and
> writing a large number of formats, and in providing solid, efficient
> bitmap tools.  The new version 6.0 is a complete gem.
Also, the GIMP is very nice if you're on a unixy system (and I think it
runs on Win* as well?)

> On a related note, unless your images are very small, or are
> absolutely dependent on individual pixel values, I'd advocate JPG over
> PNG any day of the week.  (Asbestos suit at the ready! :-)
That very much depends on the type of the image.  If an image is e.g. a
photograph, with lots of gradients, then jpg makes sense; but if it is
more geometric or discrete, then gif or png would definitely be much
better.

Some references:
PNG homepage
        http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/
PNG support in browsers
        http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/pngapbr.html

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