how to make .png work in IE ?

[Mohammed]

hey all,, sometimes i see transparent .png and they work on IE ...

how do u do that ?

[Illegalx17]

Hmmm, i have no clue, i have never seen a .png work on IE, but I have almost never used IE :P.

[Relentless]

You can't. It's that simple .

[Mohammed]

are u sure ? look this is a PNG,, and i am using IE ?

[MetalSkin]

can you give an example of a page that has a png that displays correctly in IE? I'm realy curious about this. i know that IE can display png's just dont do the background properly, but i spose its possible that there are different versions...

[Mohammed]

the example i gave up is a working PNG in IE,,,

but the following doesn't



SORRY BIGFATGUY I JUST WANTED TO USE YOU SIGNATURE FOR LEARNING PERPOSES,, I HOPE U DON'T MIND

[MetalSkin]

Okay, two issues.

1. PNG supports two modes, 8 bit and 24/32 bit color depth. IE only supports 8 bit color mode. Your example is 8 bit, this is why yours works in IE. If you look at my sig, its 24/32 bit.

2. PNG supports alpha mode for transparency so you can do proper blending for tranparent parts of your image. this means you get very nice shading to blend with the background. IE doesn't support alpha channel.

Now the above info is a summary from a tutorial on imageshack:

When and how to use internet image formats

Now there are a couple of problems with the above. 1st is that your image is rendered correctly, including alpha. 2nd is that my image is rendered except for the alpha. What I expect the issue is, is that IE has increased support for 24 bit png, but not 32 bit png files. 24 bit is the true colour support, 32 bit includes the alpha chanel, so in effect its four channels not three (like 24 bit) As such image will display but not the transparency.

Now this isn't limited to just IE, a few other browsers dont support png properly (apparently, i havn't tested this myself). So if your willing to limit yourself to a pallet of 256 colours (8 bit) then go for 8 bit png format

:edit:

the link above was written in 2002 (or last updated then). Hence why the info about IE is out of date.

[ROTD]

i only use 8bit but somtimes 24 most of my popouts are 8bit (gif format colors) 8bit gives gif styled images 24bit does much better vector edges and parts

[Mohammed]

allright guyz thats good to know thanx alot!

[MetalSkin]

hmm i made a mistake in my post. 8 bit png files do not have alpha, but they do support transparency, the same as how gif works, its either on or off. so no advantage of using png 8 bit when compared to gif other than it may be smaller dependant on the type of image it is compressing (a pretty good chance). Also png is not proprietry, so I would suggest using png 8 bit instead of gif.

Most wbe designers recommend using png 8 bit instead of gif for the compression issue and for the proprietory issue. of course if its a photo, then go for jpeg.