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Thread: Windows PNG Icons?

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    Registered+ Zathras's Avatar
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    Windows PNG Icons?

    Lo all.

    Anyone know if MS has any plans to support PNG-format for icons rather than just the .ico format? ISTR reading that they were supported from XP onwards, but can't find any info to back this up.

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    That sir, I have not come across. The only use I've seen for png icons was in dock-style applications like mobydock or y'z dock.

    Can't you also use png icons in KDE and other linux desktops?

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    You can indeed use PNG icons on many other desktops, and tasty-gorgeous they are too. Shame IE still lacks proper transparency support - (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapb...#msie-win-unix) - something my seven-year-old Acorn (remember them? School computers?) browser has!

    To illustrate the problem with IE, have a look at the page here: http://www.doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr/mir...est/index.html
    There's a correct rendering of the images here: http://www.doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr/mir.../browse207.png
    Looks like another reason to move to Firebird

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    PNG - the open source replacement for .gif right?

    How come whenever I make an avatar I can always make it twice as small with gif rather than png?

    However I've seen other peeps make incredibly small png's just like gifs? I'm using Photshop.

    See here...


    4.5K vs 13K even though they both look the same and I chose the same defaults - 256K and non interlace etc.

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    Because you haven't optimised the PNG. PNG libraries used by the likes of Photoshop are nothing like as mature as gif libraries. Even now using a ten year old bit of software I can cut down the size of GIFs created by Photoshop et al by about 10%. Try PNGcrush for a x86 PNG crusher - the machine I have all my graphics tools is in pieces at the moment as I'm modifying the PSU otherwise I'd have seen what I could have done with both the above graphics. I've got your image down to 2985 bytes with PNGcrush and Irfanview - your original PNG was in 24bpp.
    Last edited by Zathras; 27-08-2003 at 06:07 PM.

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    Originally posted by Zathras
    I've got your image down to 2985 bytes with PNGcrush and Irfanview -
    Thats impressive, I'll have to have a hunt for these programs later.

    your original PNG was in 24bpp.
    Odd, photoshop lists them both as being 8bit colour depth :/

    tbh, though it makes sense to keep on using gifs for the reasons you outline above. I cant see compuserve (or AOL is it now?) knocking on my door for royalties

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    PNGs offer far far better alpha (transparency) support, so are much better for things like icons that may appear on any colour background. As I mentioned above, PNGs would be absolutely ideal for use as icons in Windows Explorer and many other operating systems use PNGs as the default icon format (the gorgeous-looking Mac OS X included)

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    Well, I did an article on the crappy PNG support within IE, comparing it to Moz and Opera. Opera won, with full support. Moz missed a couple of things, but I think they have been all sorted out now.

    Another reason to use Opera, more like Zathras!

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    From what I've read on LibPNG Windows Opera doesn't progressively display transparent progressive PNGs whereas Firebird is flawless, so there

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