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On 11/4/99 5:00 PM, Mark Dempsey (mxd2 -at- osi -dot- com) wrote:
>We've started using PNG files because they're clearer than GIF's. So far
>they work well in Netscape (v4.7) and IE (v5.0) where I've tested them.
>Are there browsers that don't display PNG?
The short answer is "yes." For example, a quick survey of Mac OS-based
browsers has this result for displaying PNG files:
Netscape 4.7: Yes
Internet Explorer 4.5: No
iCab prerelease 1.7: Yes
Sun's HotJava 3.0: No
Opera's still in development for Macintosh, but I'd imagine it will
support PNG graphics.
Microsoft and Sun, shamefully, fail to support PNG in their current
browsers. IE 5.0 for Mac is due out one of these days, and may add
support, but I haven't read anything one way or another about this.
Until all current browser versions support PNG files, I wouldn't
recommend standardizing on that as your graphic format. That doesn't
apply, of course, if you're sure *all* of your users depend on a browser
that can read PNG.
If you don't require more than 256 colors in your lossless web-based
graphics, there's no real reason to avoid GIFs until then, regardless of
some exaggerated legal fears.
