2003–11–15

PNG and GIF

Okay, so PNG appear to be a technically superior format to GIF. But how can web developers be expected to embrace this W3C standard if Internet Explorer for Windows doesn’t fully support it? And according to this interview, IE/Win users won’t get true PNG support until they upgrade to Longhorn when it is released in 2006.

A png like the one above supports transparency and effects such as drop shadows. That image can be placed over any color on a web page and it will nicely display the smooth shadow. Cool.

Yet another reason Windows is inferior. Lack of support for standards on the web. Internet Explorer on XP gets some of it right. But I wonder, are there not going to be any improvements to it’s support of standards until 2006? Is that true? Not very smart.

No browser is perfect but Apple’s Safari is a fantastic example of a great browser that is always getting better. Mozilla Firebird is too. If you are unable to make the move to OS X (or you are unwilling to) at least download Mozilla Firebird. It is an excellent browser which is getting better all the time.