rephrase "GIF or PNG" slug as an action sentence

[Dan Connolly]

I'm validating some stuff, and I just got:

  Tip Of The Day: GIF or PNG

  http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif
  2006/11/24 01:20:24

Er... tips should be sentences of the form "do something", no?

so perhaps:

 Tip of the Day: Choose graphics formats (GIF or PNG) carefully

or better:

 Tip of the Day: Consider PNG instead of GIF for images


p.s.
I'm a bit surprised to see "GIF's strong point is that it is very widely
supported and thus well established as the default choice for simple
graphics on the Web."

But that's consistent with the current Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
Proposed Recommendation:

"Image Format Support
       
        JPEG.
       
        GIF 89a."
 -- http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#ddc





--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

[Chris Lilley]

On Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 5:37:08 PM, Dan wrote:

DC> I'm validating some stuff, and I just got:

DC>   Tip Of The Day: GIF or PNG

DC>   http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif
DC>   2006/11/24 01:20:24

DC> Er... tips should be sentences of the form "do something", no?

DC> so perhaps:

DC>  Tip of the Day: Choose graphics formats (GIF or PNG) carefully

DC> or better:

DC>  Tip of the Day: Consider PNG instead of GIF for images

Yes to either of those.

DC> p.s.
DC> I'm a bit surprised to see "GIF's strong point is that it is very widely
DC> supported and thus well established as the default choice for simple
DC> graphics on the Web."

DC> But that's consistent with the current Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
DC> Proposed Recommendation:

Yes, unfortunately. From 1995 to 2006 W3C promoted PNG over GIF, and now some parts of W3C are promoting GIF over PNG. I believe this is mainly due to a continuing lack of support from one major mobile carrier.

This is particularly ironic given that IE7 finally added the rest of the PNG support (transparent images) that was half-done in IE5 - IE6.


--
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@...
 Interaction Domain Leader
 Co-Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG

[Karl Dubost]

Le 11 juil. 2007 à 00:37, Dan Connolly a écrit :
>   http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif
>   2006/11/24 01:20:24
> Er... tips should be sentences of the form "do something", no?

no strong feeling, but why not. It seems reasonable.

> so perhaps:
>  Tip of the Day: Choose graphics formats (GIF or PNG) carefully
> or better:
>  Tip of the Day: Consider PNG instead of GIF for images

Yep. PNG had a big problem in IE 5 to 6. Alpha channel was not  
supported.
See IE blog about that
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx
But as of today, it seems to be a reasonable choice for more people  
since the release of IE7.


> p.s.
> I'm a bit surprised to see "GIF's strong point is that it is very  
> widely
> supported and thus well established as the default choice for simple
> graphics on the Web."

See above.


--
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
   QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
      *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***

[Chris Lilley]

On Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 4:22:33 AM, Karl wrote:

KD> Le 11 juil. 2007 à 00:37, Dan Connolly a écrit :
>>   http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/png-gif
>>   2006/11/24 01:20:24
>> Er... tips should be sentences of the form "do something", no?

KD> no strong feeling, but why not. It seems reasonable.

>> so perhaps:
>>  Tip of the Day: Choose graphics formats (GIF or PNG) carefully
>> or better:
>>  Tip of the Day: Consider PNG instead of GIF for images

KD> Yep. PNG had a big problem in IE 5 to 6. Alpha channel was not  
KD> supported.

It was supported to the extent that GIF was, ie fully transparent colors were indeed transparent.

They made a really poor implementation for semi-transparent colors though.

KD> See IE blog about that
KD> http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx
KD> But as of today, it seems to be a reasonable choice for more people  
KD> since the release of IE7.


>> p.s.
>> I'm a bit surprised to see "GIF's strong point is that it is very  
>> widely
>> supported and thus well established as the default choice for simple
>> graphics on the Web."

KD> See above.

And not ethat PNG had the same leverl of support that GIF had when the last major browser to add NG support), IE added it in IE4. Netscape added it in Netscape 4.04. Most of the other browsers had it earlier than Netscape.




--
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@...
 Interaction Domain Leader
 Co-Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG

[Stephanie Troeth]

Karl Dubost wrote:

>> so perhaps:
>>  Tip of the Day: Choose graphics formats (GIF or PNG) carefully
>> or better:
>>  Tip of the Day: Consider PNG instead of GIF for images
>
> Yep. PNG had a big problem in IE 5 to 6. Alpha channel was not supported.
> See IE blog about that
> http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx
> But as of today, it seems to be a reasonable choice for more people
> since the release of IE7.

Being at the coalface and developing sites for the industry at the
moment, I can vouch that we're seeing PNG as more and more of an option
precisely because of good support in IE7. It's liberated us somewhat in
terms of the continual strive achieving beautiful designs and
standards-compliant code.

There are certain cases where you wouldn't use a PNG over GIF as any
hacks to get PNG to render correctly in IE6 has a lot of limitations in
terms of placement and positioning. (Like it or not, we still have to
support this browser ...)

Hope that helps,
-steph