I know it'll be a huge deal, but it really is an issue. Say for instance someone new comes along, no graphical experience or knowledge, or any html knowledge, and just wants to install a forum as a hobby.. Now, this person decides they want to change the color of their background so they look through this forum and find some tips.. now they've changed their background to something a little darker and are now stuck with a bunch of images that appear to be low quality because they were designed only with light backgrounds in mind.
Sure, you can expect icon developers and button makers to continue making these gif images for either dark or light backgrounds and with a low level of quality but that won't last long. Designers and artist like to show quality in their work as well as have their work offer a bit of versatility and if this barrier is here it really is kind of depressing.
Give me your thoughts on this.. I want to know an understanding as to why gif was chosen as the one size fits all here..
Thanks...
Yes! Yes! PNG is so clearly superior for this.
Also, to add to this, another thing that needs to be realized is the current images that are of high demand on the internet. We're in the Web 2.0 days now and most images will contain rounded corners as well as transparency since a lot of these images will have a 3D appeal to them.
Here are my views on this. Unfortunately older Internet Explorer browsers do not support the use of transparent PNG's, hence the use of GIF's, and since GIF's are smaller in size, they also seem quite suitable. One possible way to make t his easier is to select the type of images being used in a setting, such as PNG, JPEG, or GIF. However, this may cause a problem with those who touch settings without knowing what the heck it is, leaving their site with broken images. As of now, template editing has been used and it has been working fine.
(Remember, this is just my views and are in no way official remarks),
Best Regards.
But what % of the internet uses older versions of IE compared to other browsers that are capable of viewing transparent pngs?
BTW, are handhelds such as Blackberries and iPhones capable of viewing transparent png's?
(2009-03-01, 01:00 PM)atomicj Wrote: [ -> ]But what % of the internet uses older versions of IE compared to other browsers that are capable of viewing transparent pngs?
A lot of people still use IE6.
From w3schools - Browser usage statistics
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
2009 IE7 IE6 IE8 Fx Chrome S O
January 25.7% 18.5% 0.6% 45.5% 3.9% 3.0% 2.3%
Seems to me that IE6's users are dwindling down (based on above links statistics) by 1 percent each month this past year.. and I'm sure it's users will decline even more rapidly during this year. So you can figure well before the end of this year 1/10 users will be using IE6. Also, you need to consider that most mobile devices also support transparent png's.
I'm just looking at the future of things...
A lot of people still use Internet Explorer 6, which is why we have to use .gif's. If at some point in the future that number is low enough to not represent a problem, then we will consider the change.
Until then, they will stay as .gif's.
what about PNG Fix to IE6?
there is a lot of scripts to use it
Well if you changing the theme wouldn't you change the images anyway?
Plus it's not that hard to change the images from gifs to pngs.
