Ok, here’s the deal. I’m making a layout design in fireworks mx. Well, actually its done. So now i’ve started to slice it and stuff. On some of the semi flat graphics, gif and png-8 have enough colours to display it perfectly, but png-8 is half the size of the gif compression. So I’m wondering if I should use png’s or just stick with gifs so as to avoid any problems with ppls browser support. Really, the size difference probably isn’t that big a deal, as the one graphic that I am on is 998 bytes as a gif and 429 bytes as a png-8. Thanks in advance for your advice!
I, myself, would stick with gif’s as png’s arent as widly accepted yet. Some issues you can simply avoid by using gif’s for now.
I would use gif and cleverly placed jpg can give the illusion of transparency…Do not use png for web under any circumstance. The colors will not display correctly. Since it is not a standard image format
Ok thanks for the advice 
Can you give some more info about that 3d-iva? The png format IS a standard. For about 8 or more years now. The misunderstandings come from the fact that the png format can support 8-bit transparency, but IE for Windows for some reason doesn’t support this yet. But it does support regular png files with the usual gif on/off transparency. It has since IE 4 in 1997, Netscape too.
Browser support for png’s with full 8 bit transparency include Netscape 6 and up, Opera, Mozilla, WebTV.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#browsers
The png format will eventually take over the gif format as it is superior in every way. Plus no patents:) I would use it for the web without hesitation. But maybe someone can give specific examples why not to use it?
PNG is yet to be a W3C standard is what I meant. Which basically what we as developers strive for. In any case it does not display well on just about 80% of the browser/OS platforms. I have been doing this for quite sometime and I have never seen it work consistantly enough to use which is why it isnt. I do agree that jpg quality with transparency does sound tasty but outside of flash png just does not have a place in the web work.
If you want an example all you have to do is use it. The test on a few browser OS combos and you will se why alot of folks dont use it.
hhmmmm let me test a png for ya. Let me know if the bgrd is wht or some crazy off color.
on all my cpus the coloring is kinda weird for the transparency…plus the web safe colors are kinda off depending on which computer I view on…this is the reason I choose not to use png. But if you have a target platform then you can by all means use it. It is just as easy to use a gif or some carefuly prepared jpg.
Yes, the png you posted uses the 8-bit transparency? In that case it will not look OK on IE on windows, except if you write some hack in the html but it’s kind of messy. Regular png files should display properly though. About the web safe colors across different OS’s, don’t you have that issue with gif’s as well? Just the gamma differences for Macs and Wintels make a pretty big difference, no matter what format you use.
This is a rather interesting page about the png format:
http://www.webcolors.freeserve.co.uk/png/
It explains also how the png format supports embedded information about gamma correction so that’s a big plus as well.
Unfortunately most browsers don’t support this feature properly yet.
It’s important to point out though that for the web, png is ment to replace gif’s, NOT jpg’s. For pictures you’ll will get smaller filesizes if you use jpg.
Also Photoshop is crap at saving png’s. It doesn’t compact them as well as it should. Perhaps Fireworks is much better at this, I don’t know. There are also small utilities that really compact the png’s to just the necessary info.
see at this point that is too many hoops to jump through for a graphic. This is why it s yet to be ageed upon a standard. Which is why a photoshop png is so diff from a fireworks png and onto to apps like Paintshop Pro. I would seriously advise against png’s on the web just because your viewing circle will be very small. But that is just my .02. No books and articles just my experience in the matter
