Prefered filetype

Welcome to TWF

The .png format still isn't as widely supported with browsers as the others and therefore you may have difficulties with people viewing the site.

like Webmistress said, its not widely supported, and when it is, it isnt always interpreted as you'd like, sometimes with lines or other random inserts

IE almost always supports it, from the earliest versions
Netscape is iffy
Mozilla i believe does
Text-browsers...obviously not

Besides those, i really dont know the specs for Opera, Amaya, and such. and unless viewers are on 28.8k modem, that little of a size difference doesnt matter. 56k users take awhile for graphics and the page, so they wont notice much of a difference.

The .gif format is coming out of patent shortly, as well.

Until IE dies or is updated (neither of which seem to be coming about quickly), PNG will not be a good solution if you're looking to replace both .gif and .jpg with one format. I'm not going to do a top 5 reasons for you, but IE doesn't support alpha transparency, and it's transparency for straight one colour transparency is still iffy in some browsers.

Use it if you want to. Just make sure you have good alt and title attribute values for those images. And don't use alpha transparency.

Thanks all for replying.

I`m not going to use transparency on my pics anyway.
Which versions of which browsers does not support .png?

http://www.google.com/search?q=png+browser+support

Thank you for your reply. You are very fast indeed.

zoom zoom zoom! alas, 'tis not me, 'tis Google to the rescue.

God png's alpha transparancy is sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! It's a shame that the one browser that the majority uses doesn't support it. .

As far as jpg vs png.......for things like photos and complex images it seems to me that jpeg still is the best compression choice.

Came back becuase after I posted I went to the basement to smoke, thought about it and got mad.!

Not to change the direction of the thread but;

IE supports a ton of things specific only to *it*, yet doesn't support something that actually would be useful.

*Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr, Snort, Growl*

Yeah, and don't get us started on CSS!

In short, PNG is supported by all the major browsers. The problem is that IE doesn't support the alpha transparency, which is one of the most attractive aspects of PNG. As for file sizes, I think you have to do a lot of experimentation to see if PNG can do a better job for your particular graphic. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. Evolt.ord I think has a current article on the subject.

As a sidenote, I read in Zeldman's blog last week that MS doesn't plan on upgrading its browser until 2005, and even then it won't be available as a stand alone upgrade - only with their new OS, which is subscription based. So, we will be stuck with that level of support for another 2 years, and likely for considerably longer :(

I think maybe with the 7 more years of free licensing to AOL of IE as well, we're going to have to start promotional campaigns for Netscape/Mozilla and all derivatives. And Safari, et cetera.

Cool people use better browsers! Better browsers will make good looking men and women find you more attractive! Better browsers will make you thinner, live longer and get richer!

all kinds of png info including supporting applications

LOL......I should be really thin then, becuase I've always used anything but IE.

IMO it's the alpha transparancy that makes png magical little gem that it is. Just think! *One* image that will display flawlessly no matter what color it sits atop! It's magical!

On the other hand, you do have to be careful...unless I've done something wrong in past experimentation, quite often the file size is very much more than gif or jpeg..but then that's with png24 too, because like I said.....it's the alpha transparancy that makes it worthwhile.