GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM 609
Twenty years ago, Terry Welch's improvement on Lempel-Ziv compression appeared in IEEE Computer magazine. The authors of unix 'compress' and the GIF standard incorporated that algorithm without realizing it was patent-pending. When the submarine patent surfaced ten years later, its new owner Unisys intimidated developers and web authors into moving away from GIFs, inspiring the creation of a better standard, though sadly still a less popular one. Today, July 7, 2004, Unisys's last LZW patent (in Canada) expires, leaving GIF once again free... almost. See, there's the small matter of IBM's patent, granted on the same algorithm, which is valid for another two years. That still has a chilling effect on GIF development, though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring. So how about it, IBM? You've got nothing to lose! Want to make a lot of geeks happy and release that final patent into the public domain?
GO IBM! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they use this in the SCO case (Score:5, Interesting)
infringing on this patent.
Re:No, they use this in the SCO case (Score:3, Interesting)
This one?
Looks like there might be a little colateral damage!
Indeed they do. (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO's answer to IBM's counterclaims accuses it, among other things, of selectively enforcing it. I'm not quite sure what basis there is in law for using that as a defense, however, or if that was just boilerplate text in SCO's reply.
If the poster is correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, one reason is that, once-upon-a-time, we had to build apps for browsers that didn't support .png, so even though we could handle .pngs, we had to consider our clients who were stuck with .gifs. Thankfully, even the lowliest [microsoft.com] of browser almost supports .png these days.
not even close! (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, the web would be much more beautiful if IE supported alpha transparency in PNGs.
Re:not even close! (Score:3, Funny)
IE only has an 80% market share -- and shrinking. (Score:4, Insightful)
The 95% figure may be the Windows share of the market (more like 94.5% by that link), but not everyone using Windows uses IE. (If I'm setting up a desktop that has to have Windows, Mozilla is the first app I load on it, and then remove the IE icon from the desktop.)
The recent notices from Homeland Security about IE being unsafe will only accelerate this.
Re:not even close! (Score:4, Informative)
Because when you're working on a corporate project that costs money, it's very difficult to put a business case forward for something which will only be of benefit to a very small number of visitors.
Most clients would rather pay for something that directly benefits the browsing experience of the other 95%.
Re:not even close! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not even close! (Score:3, Interesting)
So what's the business case for Java applets and Macromedia shockwave and Flash? Do we just hand-wave the lack of installed compatibility when we're talking about a buzzword?
"25% of our customers wi
How to use Alpha-transparency (Score:3, Informative)
In some limited circumstances it's possible to use alpha-transparency while gracefully degrading in IE.
For example, if you are using a solid-colour or almost-solid-colour partially-transparent image to achieve some kind of shading or tinting of the underlying background, you can do this and let IE display it as solid rather than transparent. People who only use IE will never know it was meant to be transparent and thus won't care.
The major trip-up here is that IE renders alpha-transparent PNG onto an unpr
Re:not even close! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people don't have the option to live in an ideological world and must live in a realistic one.
Elsewehere in this thread I've mentioned that I continue to use .gifs, because it's not realistic to ditch them. Regardless; I'd hardly descibe my position as "ideological" or "unrealistic" - it's one based on:
1. Portable Network Graphics work with all major browsers - now (IE doesn't support one area of PNGs, but it doesn't lose any functionality over GIFs, as GIFs don't provide 8-bit alpha-blending anyway);
2. GIFs may - as this article is about - still be patent-encumbered.
In what way is promoting increased use of PNGs unrealistic?
Re:not even close! (Score:3, Insightful)
If _your_country_ is patent encumbered, I don't see it as a problem with the technology, I see it as a problem with your country.
Re:not even close! (Score:4, Insightful)
you were implying that we should go ahead and use the uber-PNG features, and then wait for IE to catch up to see them.
Indeed, and why not? An image is just an image in IE; who cares if only 5%, 6%, 7% (and rising) of the browsing population see it as it was intended? It'll be visible in all its glory once IE 7 is available, or once punters start making the switch to more modern browsers. In the meantime IE users won't be adversely affected, and it might even prompt them to drag themselves into the 21st century, browser-wise.
Re:not even close! (Score:5, Insightful)
Switching to PNG because 5% or browsers will benefit is the unrealistic part.
Well, all browsers, including IE, can use PNGs. I presume you're refering to alpha-blending, which IE can't - currently - use? Use of non-IE browsers is steadily rising, as support for IE seems either non-existent or focused on "IE7" or whatever it'll be called. This suggusts - to me - two things:
1. Increasing numbers of people are using browsers - now - that do support alpha-blending;
2. The next iteration of IE is likely to support alpha-blending and is probably due soon (maybe soon like Longhorn, but soon, anyway...);
Either way, catering for the present-and-the-not-too-distant future doesn't seem that unrealistic.
oh well.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh well.... (Score:5, Funny)
How to force IE to do PNG Alpha properly (Score:3, Informative)
Works like a charm, doesn't introduce any MS "extensions" into your documents, and doesn't do anything if the user is smart enough to be using a web browser that actually supports standards.
Re:not even close! (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, there's a hack to display transparent PNGs in IE without breaking things for other browsers. Try this script:
Transparency not a *required* part of PNG (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong.
That's a techie urban-legend. The truth is that IE6 does support all required PNG features. Therefore it "supports PNG".
Yes, IE6 doesn't support PNG transparency, at least not in any easy way. However PNG transparency is an optional part of the PNG spec. That IE6 doesn't support transparency properly is unfortunate but doesn't invalidate their meeting the required PNG spec.
Furthermore as others have pointed out there are indeed work-arounds (ugly ones) that will enable reliable PNG transparency on IE6. Also as others have pointed out (including MS staffers) even if IE7 were to ship tomorrow and support PNG et al we'd still be stuck with a huge IE6-using population for years to come.
It would be great if IE, and indeed all of the browsers, were to fully meet all relevant standards. It would also be great if they were to then go on and meet more of the optional parts of those standards, including PNG transparency. However lets hold everyone's feet to the fire on these, not pick on one author's neglecting a feature many would like while they and others are still missing more fundamental required parts of specs.
Re:in any case (Score:4, Informative)
Every once in a while somebody seems to open their mouth without realizing they have no clue what they are talking about.
How exactly is a transparent image bloat? I did a test. As a gif a logo I have is 3.32K without alpha and 3.33K with alpha. A PNG (both regular and alpha) it was 3.45K. That should dispel both the claims that PNG is bigger and that transparency adds bloat.
And what do you do everytime you change a websites background color? Change the image?
Re:in any case (Score:5, Interesting)
See, PNG supports 256 levels of transparency. Gradients. Oh, the joy of no jagged edges.
The problem is, yes, a 24 bit PNG with 8 bits of alpha can get rather large, especially when they are used for what they weren't intended for; replacing JPGs.
Open up this link [mozilla.org] in anything but IE (I tested it with Mozilla and Opera) to see some 8-bit alpha. And a cool little demo to boot.
Re:in any case (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment makes no sense in this context.
IE doesn't support alpha transparency in PNGs, and that's substandard on their part, but I don't think the web would change much if it did unless everybody started bloating their sites with transparent effects where it is not needed.
You couldn't be more wrong. If people could use PNG the way it's supposed to be used, we could have rounded corner graphics that don't suck, change background colors without having to modify all images to match, have different background colors on different pages without the need for extra graphics for each different color background, allow user-selectable page colors, et cetera. It would actually save a lot of bandwidth.
As it is, there is very little benefit to using PNG in most cases, so people don't switch.
And PNGs with alpha-transparency are not "bloated" by any means.
Re:in any case (Score:5, Informative)
Getting alpha transparency to work in IE (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Png: A Flash Killer? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Informative)
This website [eae.net] will tell you how to turn it on. You can see it working on my website.
No idea why it's not on by default, but if it works...
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Informative)
Oh wait.
I forgot all of the morons who leave it on.
My Mistake. Guess it will work after all.
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's JFIF -- the JPEG File Interchange Format.
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Informative)
Bob Berry, the developer of CompuShow for CompuServe (remember them - the people that invented the GIF format?) included with it an animated GIF89 format file that had a picture of him. It had a speach bubble with him saying:
Oh, incidentally, it's pronounced "JIF"
A quick google later and I've found a web site which has this, and other evidence that
http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/
Thanks for playing
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Interesting)
MNGs (Animated PNGs) and Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)
If you would like to get MNG back into Mozilla, then you can follow/vote/contribute to Bugzilla bug 18574
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1857 4
(Please don't post useless comments on that bug)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Two issues with this:
1. THe fact that you cannot imagine a practical use doesn't mean there isn't one.
2. Seeing the popularity of flash to create animated advertisements, banners and such, there may not be a 'need', but defintiely a very strong wish to use such things.
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that is indeed what I am saying.
We can argue a lot about improper advertisement and such, but meanwhile advertisements are paying for the fact that we can discuss here at all.
So no, I didn't ignore your question I think.
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:4, Informative)
"png" is found twice -- both of which are related to the original post.
Now you know why we care. The web community uses gif more than png. For better or worse...
Davak
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Informative)
i'm not sure this web community would be pleased that slashdot's being used as an example of currently-accepted design choices. at least on the front end, slashdot's code is dated and inefficient. alistapart.com has a fun article [alistapart.com] on how it could be made bet
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Informative)
also, png's will almost always be smaller if optipng is used to optimize the compression
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Informative)
It's still superior to PNG's compression and I hazard a guess that PNG can be modified to use LZW.
Re:If the poster is correct (Score:3, Insightful)
You can only claim that it is "superior" in that it executes more quickly. However, it produces significantly larger files. PNG should be redefined to also use BZIP2 compression, since that produces even smaller image files than GZIP compression. (BZIP2 is also particularly good at XML data--if you ever hear anyone talking about proprietary XML compression, mention that BZIP2 is the generic method to beat, not GZIP.)
Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Blending with any background means you can change the background globally and not worry about re-blending all of the images.
2. An image which is produced externally (e.g. by a partner) can blend with your layout cleanly without being customized.
However, MOST uses of alpha blending in web design would ACTUALLY be better done in SVG if SVG in browsers could finally get first-class status.
Why? Well, just for starters, LCDs and CRTs have different optimial anti-aliasing strategies. If I want to put a circle on a Web page, right now I have to choose one of those strategies ahead of time (or resort to a plug-in). If we allow SVG "images", then we can simply render that circle however the user directs it to be (presumably because they've selected a "CRT-friendly" or "LCD-friendly" preference in their browser or desktop).
Once you eliminate anti-aliasing as a concern, there are still reasons to do alpha-blending in regular images (such as those above), but the general case (logos, text, shapes, etc) will be handled more cleanly.
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
The quality of a web site is determined more by it's substance than by it's appearance.
Good web site design doesn't even require images.
Alpha blending is not critical.
It's nice, but IMO it's ranks below "spell checker" in the hierarchy of good web site design tools.
-- less is better.
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like CSS for positioning: you don't need it (you could use tables instead), but it makes for better design, because you can separate content from presentation. PNG is like this because then the image is "my_logo.png" rather than "my_logo_over_white_background.gif", "my_logo_over_black_background.gif", "my_logo_over_blue_background.gif", "my_logo_over_puke_green_background.gif",
"my_lo
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Many people also believe PNG's to generally produce larger images to GIF, if youre generating PNG's using the 'recomended settings' then yes for many images this is the case, but if your image doesn't need 16.7 milion colors and full alpha-transparency, don't enable them switch to pallete based with no-transparnecy.
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
The GIMP does a much better job of it.
Re:Why do we need GIF anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
This is cause for celebration. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone happen to have a copy of the alg. lying around?
Re:This is cause for celebration. (Score:5, Informative)
Terry A. Welch, "A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", IEEE Computer, Vol. 17, No. 6, 1984, pp. 8-19.
If you don't want to go to a library and look that up, then Google will find you about 12000 hits on "Welch LZW", and the first few all seem to be exactly what you want.
Re:This is cause for celebration. (Score:5, Informative)
the algo is/was very widely known.
Re:Purpose of patents? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you cannot (legally) use a patented technology without permission from the patent holder, even if you don't make money from it.
Why should we care (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be more interesting is suing someone over it. This patent "cold war" is annoying - it would be more beneficial to see an all-out war where large companies crumble, and the idiocy of software patents is demonstrated once and for all. Cold war only server to suffocate, and masses never learn of the damage being done, because it's so invisible.
Interesting article on how IP law conflicts with ancient chinese tradition is here [slashdot.org]
Not in the old days (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays IBM is on the rebound, and wants to put forth a kinder and gentler face. In as such, along with the almost impossible task of enforcing a practically public domain standard, it would be politically correct for them to just look the other way on GIFs.
The other patent should constitute prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the lawyer types might still want to argue the case since that's how that make their money
Re:The other patent should constitute prior art (Score:3, Informative)
1) Until recently, the US didn't publish the applications, only the granted patents, and the lifetime of the patent was from date or grant, not date of filing. There was the tendancy for the applicants not to bother rushing things through. (dare I say submarining).
Note that elsewhere, patent applications became public after, IIRC, 18 months and their lifetime started from the date of filing - there was no point in being tardy.
2) I suspect that, back t
Obligatory Troy ref. (Score:5, Funny)
Chest Thumping (Score:4, Insightful)
PNG (Score:5, Insightful)
</TokenMicroSuckJab>
Re:PNG (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PNG (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad all the exploits I wrote have failed to convince people to switch to functional web browsers and rid the world of MSIE once and for all.
Or maybe I shouldn't have said that.
LZW tiff, too (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I know there are deflated TIFFs, but they can be like "wha...?" in the prepress world.
Re:LZW tiff, too (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, you're safe.
jamie needs to hit the books. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why yes, nothing to lose. Which is exactly why you're practically begging them.
... though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring.
No offense jamie, but you should really refrain from making things up like this. There is no one anywhere with any sort of legal background that would agree with this. Hell, it's probably libel to say that. It most assuredly is an outright lie.
If IBM releases it, then that's great, but don't try to badger them into it.
Re:jamie needs to hit the books. (Score:5, Insightful)
I traded email with several people who know the history of this algorithm and its patents fairly well. I wasn't able to get a quote from a legal expert backing this up by press time, but it hardly matters because this opinion indeed is the consensus of those I have talked to. And I mentioned the duplicate-patent issue to an IBM PR rep, who had plenty of time but didn't offer a correction.
I stand by what I wrote.
Re:jamie needs to hit the books. (Score:3, Insightful)
He's free to say that there is a concensus without providing links. The consensus could well have been between his two lawyer friends.
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think having LZW is of much more significance than GIF.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Informative)
IBM isn't going after anybody.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unisys was collecting money on GIF licenses for years, if IBM wanted to capitalize on this, they would've sued Unisys back then.
Besides that, there is good reason: It is, by all accounts I've read, the same algorithm.
The Unisys LZW patent had even been granted before the IBM patent had been applied. It had priority by a mile. The IBM patent is simply worthless.
Developers shouldn't concern themselves with bogus patents. I for one have written programs which save GIF files, and although I respect(ed) the Unisys patent, I'm not at all worried about the IBM one.
SCO v IBM - This Patent Is Being Actively Used (Score:5, Informative)
Actually that patent is being used in IBM's (second amended) counterclaims [groklaw.net] in the SCO v IBM case.
Re:SCO v IBM - This Patent Is Being Actively Used (Score:5, Informative)
While it would be nice for IBM to release the patent to the public domain, they would have to drop this particular claim from the SCO lawsuit if they did.
Re:SCO v IBM - This Patent Is Being Actively Used (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure that's true, but IANAL. The current status of the patent probably has little to do with the status of the patent at the time of infringement.
It would probably reduce the amount of damages but would still achieve the primary purpose of making SCO burn through cash. We all know [or at lwast strongly suspect] that the total damages to IBM by SCO will far exceed the value of SCO...
IE can work with PNG (Score:4, Informative)
PNG vs. JPEG (Score:4, Interesting)
After all that the textbook line.
But then he sent me a JPEG with the quality turn to max and it looked perfect and was way smaller than PNG. Do the textbooks have it all wrong?
Re:PNG vs. JPEG (Score:5, Informative)
Also: make sure your PNG encoder is configured correctly. In most cases you want to be using the 'adaptive' filter.
Re:PNG vs. JPEG (Score:5, Informative)
JPEG, like MPEG (and Vorbis, Theora,
PNG images, on the other hand, encode the image exactly as it looks. Basically, a PNG image is a collection of pixels, some metadata, optionally compressed with deflate (same algorithm used by gzip).
JPEG images are the better choice for photograpic images (which is what they are intended for), where the exact pixel colors don't matter that much. PNG is better for line drawings, text, high contrast images; basically anything that doesn't bear slight changes to the colors. For large images, JPEG can be significantly smaller, making the case for using JPEG for screen dumps and such.
Alpha-Transparency (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Alpha-Transparency (Score:3, Informative)
Or, actually, what GIFs have is transparency, whereas PNGs have an alpha channel, which allows for the specification of translucency - or opacity which is the opposite quality.
LZW is USEFUL and NON-OBVIOUS (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a big breakthrough when algorithms like LZW, which compressed data that contained repeated multi-byte patterns (like text, or bitmap drawings), were developed. The previous state of the art was to pre-analyze the data and build a table that would have to be exchanged before the data could be decompressed (like Huffman encoding). LZW lets you built the table on-the-fly as the data is compressed, and exchange it on-the-fly as its being decoded (because the compression "table" and the data stream are actually the same.)
LZW does seem simple to us now; in fact one standard Job Interview question I ask is to put the LZW algorithm on the whiteboard! However, for those of use who have been around for more than 20 years, it was a significant breakthrough.
Re:LZW is USEFUL and NON-OBVIOUS (Score:3, Informative)
hmm. (Score:3, Insightful)
A quick cursory overview of the patent link on IBM's patent doesn't say one thing about the GIF format, just the compression algorithm (with JCL code).
What if this patent doesn't cover GIF at all, but a hardware implementation of compression on a hard drive, or a MO drive, or some other device? They can't exactly release all claims to it that easily.
Just seems silly to 'call out' a company to release a patent. Contrary to popular belief the bigger companies out there can't turn on a dime and have hundreds of processes to do things to keep a rogue employee from releasing all claim to all patents or something crazy like that, so it could take them two years just to release something that's going to die quietly anyway.
Also speculating on what a company will/won't do with a patent based on some arbitrary IANAL comment from the editor seems a bit risky. While IBM is into Open Source heavily they're not there to stop making their stockholders money either. Patenting things lets them do so.
Intimidated? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not very well I hasten to add, GIF's are still used rather a lot [google.com] and even Slashdot hasn't bothered to convert all their images to PNG.
Improved JPEG compression possible, too! (Score:5, Interesting)
If IBM would release this patent, we could change some #defines in the JPEG code and get 10% smaller pictures with no change in quality.
Thad Beier
what do you mean by 'better standard'? (Score:3, Funny)
It expired a year ago in the US anyway! (Score:3, Interesting)
"We were able to search the patent databases of the USA, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan patent expired on 20 June 2004 and in Canada until 7 July 2004. "
How do you pronounce "gif"? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK.. I have been watching the debate for several years (it's like watching the grass grow). Here's where things are:
There are several arguments for GIF being pronounced with a HARD G:
1) "G" stands for Graphical. Graphical has a hard G.
2) The majority of people pronounce it that way.
3) Most words that start with G have a hard G.
The main case for Soft G is that the designers of the file format specifically stated in their specification document that it's a soft G.
Item 1 has been shot down as follows: Yes, G stands for graphical (*as specified by the designers of the file format*). Three problems with that:
a) The technical pronounciation of Graphical is gha-raf-i-cal. So it's not the same phonetical sound as hard G. You would need to then pronounce it Gh-IF, NOT hard G "GIF".
b) What something stands for has nothing to do with how an acronym is pronounced. Modem, for example, stands for modulation/demodulation. Is it pronounced "mah-deem"? Laser would be pronounced as if it rhymes with brassiere... etc. The fact that g stands for graphical has nothing to do with the pronounciation of the acronym.
c) If you are referring to the word "graphical" as the basis for the argument, then you are basing your argument on the the words picked by the designers, and used in the specification. And in that specification, the designers said that it's pronounced JIFF like the peanut butter. So for consistency, if you go back to the specification to determine what it stands for, then you must live by their specified pronounciation.
Item 2 has been shot down because the majority doesn't rule on matters of punctuation. (pronounciation?)
Item 3 has been shot down because there is no rule. There are MANY words that have a soft G pronounciation. People have even argued that GIF is part of Gift, and so they should sound the same. (Gin (soft g) and gink (hard g) are examples that shoot down that logic.)
So we go back to the specification... no one seems to be able to logically shoot this down. The folks who invented the file format decided what it would be called, and how to pronounce it. If you want to invent your own file format, you can pronounce it any way you want. You can even pick a symbol, and then be referred to as "The file format formerly known as Prince". But as inventor, it's your call.
I want to say this in a *gentle* way... the *gist* of my message is that most GIF pronounciation arguments amount to *gibberish*, when you consider the *general* logic behind them. I'll let the *genie* out of the bottle here: Have a *gin* and tonic, and cool your *genitals*. You have to go back to the *genesis* of the file format, at the *germination* of the idea, when they first *generated* the specification. to determine the correct pronounciation. It is soft G, like JIFF.
(it's really fun to read the posts where people write.. "Those who pronounce GIF as JIF..." and correctly read that aloud ("Those who pronounce JIF as JIF"))
OK.. let this be the definitive guide to pronouncing GIF. You can pronounce it any way you want, but if you are one who insists on being "correct", get used to saying JIF. And I haven't read a logical, solid argument YET for pronouncing it with a hard G. Right now, Soft G is winning the debate, and it's not even close!
this is me going off topic (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the majority do rule on matters of pronounciation when it comes to English. The major linguistic project of English (the Oxford English Dictionary) is a descriptive not a prescriptive document. That means that once a significant minority of English users use or pronounce a word in a certain way, it'll get recorded in the dictionary.
All this is just to say that both "jif" and "gif" are acceptable pronounciations of GIF.
Re:GIF sucks. Move on. (Score:5, Informative)
You're talking about an obsolete technology [GIF] that nobody cares about.
I'd question that. Check Google images [google.com] and see how many web sites still exclusively use .gifs. Not to mention a certain main-stream browser whose support for .pngs is still patchy.
I guess you and I have different definitions of "obsolete".
Re:PNG's..... (Score:5, Informative)
You can't make animations with PNG files....
Sure you can, only the result is called MNG [libpng.org].
Except from what I've understood... (Score:5, Informative)
I use PNG quite a bit, but mainly as a competitor to TIF files, but I do prefer to use PNG over GIF in websites too. However, I'm only using non-transparent, plain PNGs for maximum compatibility.
Animated GIFs? Oh, right. I turned those off, along with pop-ups. If I wanted that, I'd actually use flash or something like that. I figure either you don't block stuff (which means GIF + flash) or you block stuff, in which case you don't see either. Either way, I don't see much room for GIF files...
Kjella
Re:PNG's..... (Score:5, Informative)
When I led the process of drafting the PNG specification, GIF animation did not yet exist. Animation was not part of the original GIF specification. The GIF89a specification *did* offer a mechanism for including multiple images in a single file, and a very basic (but, in retrospect, effective) mechanism for replacing only a specified part of the preceding image. But whether this was supposed to be animation with a time component was never defined, and there was in fact no way to specify how long each frame was supposed to appear, probably because the real intent was to be able to compose a single final still image from many sections. Multiple image GIFs were a footnote to the GIF specification which hardly anybody used until Netscape stepped in.
Netscape's animated GIF format was a clever hack on top of this: they defined a new GIF chunk to specify the pause between frames.
Here's the kicker: Netscape was repeatedly invited to participate in the PNG design process. They had someone reading the list, I gather, but they never offered any suggestions or contributions. If they had, they would likely have been considered very seriously.
But instead, the first we heard of GIF animation was its public release in Netscape (2.0 beta, if I recall correctly). They could have contributed to the design of a PNG or MNG that did include animation and, by way of that compelling feature, would have been more likely to quickly replace GIF. But they didn't.
We (the PNG designers) did consider retrofitting animation into PNG when Netscape's animated GIF appeared. In fact, I lobbied for that at one point. Unfortunately we had already finalized the functional specification and there was no hope of reaching agreement on how to "jam in" the animation feature at the last minute on top of an otherwise pretty elegant image format.
Instead, the MNG group was formed to create a specification for a powerful lossless animation format. And they succeeded -- but MNG has yet to really catch fire, and animated vector formats like SWF and SVG are gradually replacing animated GIF anyway for most purposes. At the end of the day, lossless bitmap animation is a pretty bandwidth-intensive proposition.
Animations... (Score:3, Insightful)
Native support in the browser for SVG and SVG animation would more than replace animated GIFs as well as providing lots of interesting capabilities that could be useful in other areas.
Of course, that too would be left unused because IE doesn't support it (or worse yet IE would support some bizarre proprietary MS reworking of the basic ideas).
Re:IBM is NOT friendly (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop spreading the lie that IBM only "defends" itself using patents.