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APNG - Printable Version

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APNG by zach on 06-21-2008 at 10:14 AM

Watch out GIF, there's a new guy in town. Better animations in Firefox 3.
[Image: spinfox.png]

Edit: This was more about Firefox 3 support (APNG isn't that new).

RE: APNG by Basilis on 06-21-2008 at 10:23 AM

Looks awesome. Animated PNGs simply rock! :)

RE: APNG by Ezra on 06-21-2008 at 11:15 AM

Yeah cute, prerendered animation...

Processing is the next thing...

Example...

RE: APNG by zach on 06-21-2008 at 11:40 AM

Interesting. What's cool about APNG though is that it's a .png which is already accepted so it can be used in anywhere. In supported browsers they are animated and in non supported browsers like IE7, it's just a static PNG.

I haven't noticed anyone using it yet, have you?

RE: APNG by RaceProUK on 06-24-2008 at 05:25 PM

GIFs load quicker, so people will continue using them for a while yet. Plus, GIFs enjoy universal support.

RE: APNG by Menthix on 06-24-2008 at 05:49 PM

Sadly it will be unusable for regular websites as long as IE doen't support it.

RE: APNG by prashker on 06-24-2008 at 05:56 PM

i like it :p

RE: APNG by L. Coyote on 06-25-2008 at 02:21 AM

quote:
Originally posted by SonicSam
i like it :p
Ditto. It simply rocks.

quote:
Originally posted by MenthiX
Sadly it will be unusable for regular websites as long as IE doen't support it.
Gah, no! The last thing we need is wannabe-webmasters abusing animated PNGs. It's bad enough with all the useless Flash websites... :dodgy:
RE: APNG by roflmao456 on 06-25-2008 at 02:47 AM

this will create a whole new round of high-res ads :O

RE: APNG by CookieRevised on 06-25-2008 at 06:39 AM

Errrr..... there is already an animated PNG format since years!!!! It is called MNG..... which IS supported by a whole bunch of graphic tools since years.

Now I understand that this new APNG is downward compatible with PNG, but I find it very stupid that they promote a new 'format'* while there is already a perfect existing format (also based upon the PNG format), waiting to be 'promoted'/'used' more....

pure marketing if you ask me....

APNG, is also rejected as an official extension to PNG, so the chance that this 'new format' will be editable in normal graphic programs will be very small. And I wouldn't be surprised if this just ends in a Mozilla-only feature.

Come to think of it, what happened to JPG2000 (lossless JPG). It was also something like this (except that it was actually a new format, unlike APNG) and died out also...

------

* actually there is nothing 'new' about it. It is just a normal PNG format but with an added chunck. All this actually is is a promotion campaign for a reader wich reads a new chunck.

In other words, APNG is NOT a real animated PNG; it is a static PNG with just an extra block in which the animation is stored, just as you can store actually anything you like in a PNG.... so calling it a new image format is completely wrong.

It would be the same as calling a GIF with an extra comment block which includes some HTML the new image format HGIF or something...

RE: APNG by blackjack on 06-25-2008 at 07:15 AM

8-)
calm down, sir
:lol:

Pure marketing or not, it still looks great :P

And your mini nanas would look better :refuck:
why dont you try that :)?

RE: APNG by Eddie on 06-25-2008 at 07:27 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Ezra
Yeah cute, prerendered animation...

Processing is the next thing...

Example...
That links pretty cool, i like the quality of that APNG too :)
RE: APNG by CookieRevised on 06-25-2008 at 05:22 PM

[grumpy old cynical man mode on]

quote:
Originally posted by blackjack
Pure marketing or not, it still looks great :P
It has potential.... and it has equally potential to be forgotten about in a year.

quote:
Originally posted by blackjack
And your mini nanas would look better :refuck:
why dont you try that :)?
no they wont look better.... (and I was waiting for someone to start talking about animated emoticons like that)

Why would an image with less than 256 colors look better in 32bit color format?

You don't need 32bit colors for like 99% of all advertising or animated emoticons or whatever other stuff this animated PNG is going to be used for. Examples? Take a look at how inefficient all those animated GIFs emoticons are made on forums etc, including most of the emoticons on these forums.... Read some older threads where it is shown that many animated stuff can easly be done with far less colors, far less filesize, etc... and that in most cases the people who make them don't even have a clue about how much colors they actually need and use or how many frames and thus images they need. They just start from a photograph, convert it, and then think they need like thousands of colors and hundreds of frames to show it properly. While 900 colors or so are almost exactly the same except for a 1 bit difference (thus invisible to human eye), the same for the frames. And this Animated PNG is going to be abused mostly for such stuff.

------

Sorry for not sharing all your enthiousiasm, but this there is nothing 'wow' or 'cool' about this so called "new format". In fact, animation and other stuff (including far more 'wow' stuf than animation imho) have been put in PNG chuncks since years. The only "new" thing about this whole story is that Mozilla is now going to 'support' its own(!), custom, and unofficial, PNG chunck.

quote:
Originally posted by roflmao456
this will create a whole new round of high-res ads :O
Sorry, but it would be pretty stupid to start using just APNG for ads.

Mostly because APNG is not supported by anything, except Mozilla. So only people who use Mozilla would be able to view those ads.

Another thing is its filesize. An ad should be shown as quickly as possible and thus as fast as possible being downloaded.

And lastly, as said before, you do not need 32bit colors to make some advertising. You can make very beautiful ads in 256 colors too. The only difference is imagination and the skillz of the ad-makers. A good ad-maker (and graphic artist) can make stunning ads in 256 and less colors just as well. Noobs and script kiddies of course will fail, since they simply use the good old graphic converters to reduce colors, with bad frames, pixelated stuff, huge filesizes, etc as a result.

So, as an ad-maker, what would you choose?
- big (unneeded) filesize, slow to download, and only supported in Mozilla.
- small filesize, quickly downloaded and showed and supported in all browsers.

---------

Don't get me wrong. It is nice that Mozilla tries to do something (but this APNG isn't the first format they tried to 'push' and seriously failed) and it is nice that it is downwards compatible, but that's it, nothing original and certainly absolutely nothing "WOOHOO!!11!!! L337! SO ORIGINAL, THIS iS GOING TO BE THE BOMB" about it imho, just a small "hmm, nice".


[grumpy old cynical man mode off]
RE: APNG by Lou on 06-25-2008 at 06:31 PM

quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
Mostly because APNG is not supported by anything, except Mozilla.
Not true, Opera supports it as well. Along with two image viewing programs (KSquirrel and XnView).
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
it has equally potential to be forgotten about in a year.
Probably not if there's so much marketing about it.
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
(but this APNG isn't the first format they tried to 'push' and seriously failed)
Which other ones did they try to force onto people? I'm curious to know.
RE: APNG by CookieRevised on 06-25-2008 at 11:28 PM

Nice, a few small programs (of which on is for *nix) which nobody heared of. I'll drop PaintShopPro and PhotoShop immediatly now :p. (kuddos for Opera which is going to support it though). But "so much marketing"? Where? sure, on their own sites and fan sites/blogs, nowhere else though. They once had a kind of animated 3D vector based graphic format or something (forgot the name) in the early days which they also claimed to be the new graphical format of the web and a lot of other blahblah and "marketing", just like it is now. Nobody used it, except for some few die hards for a short time. It died out and evolved in the current vector formats you can use. However, even those aren't used by anybody. Hence my sceptisism. Though, the backward compatibility is a very big plus and may just be the thing to make it succesfull, but still, nothing new...

Anyways, I keep on being sceptic about all this untill next year or so. I'm curious how much it is being used, supported and talked about by then. It wont be very popular if it isn't going to be supported by most of the graphical related programs, including all browsers. Because, other than some novelity, what is the use of adding an animated PNG while you still need to check for compatibilty and eventually providing another animated format for those browsers which don't support it... You might as well just use something which is supported by all to begin with and to keep things short and simple.

But if it turns out to be used all over the place in a year's time, I'll "WHOOHOO" also :D (and eat my hat or something....:p)... until then: "pfff"....