The end of PNG?

[System]

CNET Media News has an interesting article regarding the potential demise of the .PNG graphics format which was foreseen by many as the replacement for the industry standard .GIF.

Read the full story

[KennyR]

I always guessed PNG failed to make any impact - just because, in reality, not many people actually used it. Are we looking at the future of ogg vorbis too?

[bloodline]

Fair point, but many MP3 player manufactures claim to have OGG Vorbis firmware upgrades in the works. Maybe it will have a slightly better future... :-?

[Tomas]

makes no sense does it? Free open source format, which is better than most formats out there... Dies  :-?

[Piru]

I find this quite silly.

It's as silly reasoning as the claim that GIF would die out completely because of the Unisys patent issue.

PNG is not going anywhere.

[Bezzen]

I won't stop using PNG's on all my websites.  :-)

[cecilia]

PNG's are actually quite nice! i use it with GIMP, AfterEFFECTS and other programs. we used it on Children of DUNE to transfer files between (effects) shops because it's not lossy and is much smaller than the horrible tga.

maybe THOSE losers will stop using PNG's, but i won't!! :-D

[vortexau]

The slogan for Mortein - an insectacide - goes: "When you're on a good thing, stick to it!"[/i]
From True colors shine through:

. . . Without PNG, graphics appear differently and in different shades of color on screens of different kinds of computers: PCs, Macintosh, or Unix workstations. With PNG, files can be seen as intended on various machines.

PNG files average about 30 percent smaller than equivalent GIF files and can download faster to a user's screen. "The image comes sharper much more quickly, and not with that stretched appearance," Lilley said. As a result, a PNG viewer gets a first preview of an image with one sixty-fourth of the data downloaded, compared with only one-eighth for a GIF file.

PNG supports colour depths right on up to 24Bit (maybe even 32Bit?), while GIF's limitation is 8Bit!

[Turambar]

we used it on Children of DUNE

That show is fantastic and so was the first Dune series. The special effects are very nice, thats the kinda stuff i eventually wanna be able to do.

[toRus]

GIF is having a slow death. And that will come from its inefficient proprietary architecture that prohibits any real future improvement and its inability to enthuse the mobile and multimedia industry. So long it has survived due to both web authors' and M$ Internet XXXPlorer's  incompetence.

CNET is a lame site. If you want biased reports it's a good start. You can do a lot better if you are interested in computers and technology.

[zudobug]

I use PNG all the time. It's my favourite image format for web graphics. I am really hoping it doesn't die out. Or at least mozilla and other browsers continue to support it for the sake of the few that do use it. Alpha transparency effects rock :-)

As for Ogg Vorbis, that might do well when hardware starts supporting it... Check this out:

Ogg officially official; Vorbis finding its way into hardware players (Arstechnica)

[Dan]

It´s so stupid that i can´t think of a good comment to make. PNG won´t die so easy as someMicrosoftcheerleaders at cnet  wan´t.

[cecilia]

That show is fantastic and so was the first Dune series. The special effects are very nice, thats the kinda stuff i eventually wanna be able to do.

thanks. area51 did all the worm stuff. among other things i did Leto doing his super-worm speed. especially the last nite's final fight.
good luck and keep using those PNG'!
 :-D

[meerschaum]

PNG's rock because their not 256 color limited... but sadly suck because IE dosent render them properly and until IE does nobody is gonna really push the PNG.

[CodeSmith]

What I really like is the spin Unisys is putting on their behaviour:

But Unisys credited its exertion of the LZW patent with the creation of the PNG format, and whatever improvements the newer technology brought to bear.

"We haven't evaluated the new recommendation for PNG, and it remains to be seen whether the new version will have an effect on the use of GIF images," said Unisys representative Kristine Grow. "If so, the patent situation will have achieved its purpose, which is to advance technological innovation. So we applaud that."

Corporate sleaze at its best :-D