in reply to FYI: GIF (non) support in GD

The question in my mind, is "is it worth it to put GIF support back into things"? PNG is a better format all around -- not surprising, considering the GIF format is from 1987 (with revisions in 1989), and untouched since then. 'Old' ne 'bad', I know, but GIF is an old format, with tradeoffs that no longer make sense.

PNG gives better compression, better metadata, and better color depth. Even without the difference in patent-encumberation being an issue, PNG is still clearly better then GIF.

Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

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Re: Re: FYI: GIF (non) support in GD
by hardburn (Abbot) on Feb 27, 2004 at 18:00 UTC

    PNG is superior in every way, except one, which might be the most important in practice: vendor support. IE doesn't support it's transparency correctly, and Photoshop has a piss-poor PNG compressor (last I checked, you're actually better off not compressing PNGs at all in Photoshop). Those two products make up the most common way of viewing and creating images, respectively.

    Further, since Microsoft says there aren't going to be any more updates to IE until Longhorn comes out, and it'll take at least 1-2 years before a significant fraction of MS users are on the new OS, we're going to see at least three more years of IE non-functionality of PNG support (unless the recently announced "XP Reloaded" changes the IE release, too).

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      I strongly suspect that XP Reloaded will come with IE Reloaded, and be the only way to get some of it's funky new features.

      I doubt it will improve anything that users are not crying for, and that doesn't yeild itself to a bit in a magizine article showing what cool new features it has.

      The idea of Reloaded seems to be to get a new box on shelves and people buying it like a new product when it's really not, with as little development time as possible, because every day somebody works on this is a day they aren't working on Loghorn.

      Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

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        XP Reloaded. I'm hoping the Linux folks who worked on the matrix special effects sue the pants on Microsoft for that.

        BTW... Did you see the part in XP Reloaded, when Mr. Torvalds, I mean Neo, dives deep into the guts of the matrix and kills Bill Gates, I mean Elrond, err, I mean Agent smith and then it all restarts again -- and only the command line remains?

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      Very true about transparency.

      I'd just add that png does not support animated images.

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        So what? That's what MNG is for, PNG's sibling format.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

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        I'd just add that png does not support animated images.

        With all the flashing, dancing advertising that is done with GIF animations, I consider that a feature.

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