[imp] GIF -> PNG replacement

Ryan Gallagher ryan@studiesabroad.com
Thu Oct 24 18:20:20 2002


Quoting Jan Schneider <jan@horde.org>:

> Zitat von Miroslaw Jaworski <mjaw@ipartners.pl>:
> 
> > What do you think about replacing GIF's with PNG's?
> 
> There's no need to do this.
>  
> > GIFs authors have patented it and it's somehow "commercial" now - i don't
> > know the it's exact status, but i disliked GIF format since that "GIF
> > patent" thing. Personally i replace gifs with pngs in my projects.
> 
> GIFs are only problematic if you create them with lzh compression and don't
> use a tool for this that didn't license the compression algorithm.
> 
> The whole thing will even become less problematic when Unisys' patent on the
> compression algorithm expires by the end of this year.
> 
> Jan.

Also, I seem to recall reading somewhere that IE as of the latest version has
BROKEN their support of PNG (I could be mistaken).  The workaround was posted by
MS and involved adding about 100 lines of ActiveX code preceeding each use of
PNG.  Yick!

But maybe it was a rumor, or maybe they resolved it.

-- 
Ryan T. Gallagher