[ale] Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Re: [svlug] EVENT: Burn All GIFs Day.

[Steve Baker]

Jim Kinney wrote:
> 
> My $.02.
> 
> Why comply?

...or more to the point - How to comply?

Previous mail to this thread has suggested some means to
auto-convert GIF to PNG or JPEG as the final solution to this
problem...that's FAR from the truth!

The survey on /. shows that only 80-odd percent of people have
a browser that supports PNG.

I also don't relish getting email complaints from maybe 20% of
the visitors to my site telling me it doesn't work anymore.

However, it's worse even than that.  Those people who voted
that their browser "supports" PNG probably didn't test it
carefully enough.

PNG has an alpha (transparency) channel - just like GIF, but
when I tried to display a cut-out PNG image that looks OK
in GIMP, it comes out 100% opaque in Netscape 4 and won't load
at all in Netscape 3.

So, no PNG.  I immediately thought to use JPEG instead but
I was suprised to find same result - no transparency support.

It's going to be a very boring web if everyone's pages have
only rectangular and non-animated images.

It seems like we URGENTLY need to get fixes for the PNG renderer
into Netscape because getting rid of GIF simply isn't possible
until that happens and is widely disseminated.

I'm told that Internet Explorer's latest release can do
transparent PNG's - but that it can only display them
when they are inlined...so no joy there either.

Are there other file formats that Netscape and IE can display?
I only know of GIF, JPEG and PNG...there must be others surely?

-- 

Steve Baker                (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
Raytheon Systems Inc.      (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: sjbaker at hti.com      http://www.hti.com
Home: sjbaker1 at airmail.net http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1