
The PNG image file format is now more popular than GIF - MarionG
http://w3techs.com/blog/entry/the_png_image_file_format_is_now_more_popular_than_gif
======
twodayslate
Now if only animated pngs were more supported

<http://caniuse.com/apng>

~~~
gue5t
Webkit's stance is basically "we're only doing it if upstream libpng supports
it" (because APNG support basically requires a couple hooks in libpng itself)
but the libpng devs refuse to accept the patch for apng support because they
are of the opinion that libpng should process only PNG, not derivative
formats, which is what they consider APNG.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
In fairness I can see it from the libpng guy's perspective. It will make their
library larger and potentially less fit for a certain purpose.

Why hasn't someone forked libpng, added the apng patch and then made it
available for WebKit? Then everyone is happy. Just needs a middle-man.

~~~
maxst
No need to fork libpng. Currently, vanilla libpng and apng patch are both
hosted on sourceforge, and it's trivial to automatically download both and
apply the patch. In fact, a few distros (Arch, Gentoo, Mandriva, FreeBSD)
already do exactly that for their libpng packages.

But keep in mind that apng patch only adds a few functions to libpng API, and
it's entirely up to applications to actually use those API calls to request
extra frames.

------
ChuckMcM
And this particular circle is complete.

Of course the patents that were the heart of such controversy are now expired
so GIF code is no longer 'not-open' but it has a bad reputation so we don't
play with it any more :-).

I like PNG though, the library development, while a bit rocky at first,
matured quite nicely and about 5 years ago crossed the point where enough
people took the time to figure out how to use it that is dropped into
everything that dealt with images. That has been pretty handy.

~~~
eli
Yup, great point. I think if there weren't patent concerns over GIF years ago,
there wouldn't have been nearly as wide support for the format, which means
far fewer people would be using it today.

~~~
ben0x539
Sounds like there's need for a startup that fakes patents for obsolete file
formats to create pressure for the industry to switch to technically superior
alternatives. Who wants to fund me?

~~~
ChuckMcM
You should patent that idea.

------
jug6ernaut
I know nothing behind the standard that is "GIF". But am i the only one who
thinks its completely unreasonable that a few GIF's can turn my browser into a
5fps mess? How is there not a better option for this?

~~~
nollidge
I think that's unreasonable, especially because it's never happened to me in
recent memory.

~~~
pablasso
Maybe not 5PFS but happens to me too when page has many gifs.

------
darkstalker
What happened to JPEG 2000? It supports lossless too, but never seen it
implemented on browsers.

~~~
eggspurt
The image quality improvements with JPEG2000 were mathematical but not really
perceptual, see <http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~jakulin/jpeg/artifacts.htm>

~~~
No1
Those photographic comparisons are pretty subjective and zoom in on
muddy/blurred areas of the image for comparison - it would have been nice to
see the entire photos. The non-photographic images clearly give JPEG2000 an
edge, but he then compares it to PNG. Lossy compression isn't for compressing
things like pictures of text, which this guy notes but makes the comparison
anyway.

The output quality is also codec dependent, and the one used in those tests
has been shown to be towards the back of the pack in a 2005 shoot-out[1].

There is also no comparison between lossless JPEG2000 and PNG on a photograph.

[1]
[http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/jpeg2000_codecs...](http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/jpeg2000_codecs_comparison_en.html)

------
sk5t
More numerous perhaps, but not more important--going by the insane explosion
in animated GIFs in the last two years... I think folks would have stuck by
JPEG if it offered transparency.

~~~
Zirro
"...going by the insane explosion in animated GIFs in the last two years... I
think folks would have stuck by JPEG if it offered transparency."

That does not make sense as JPEG doesn't support animation. Regardless, the
blurriness caused by normal JPEG-compression levels makes it a bad option for
most non-photo images.

~~~
prezjordan
I believe parent was saying PNG folks would have stuck with JPEG if it offered
transparency.

~~~
Zirro
Indeed, it seems that way after reading through it again and inserting a dot.

I would still argue that images used in the layout of the average site, most
of which are already prone to having transparent parts, are better off using a
lossless rather than a lossy format.

~~~
sesqu
You're underestimating the number of non-photographic JPEG files in use
despite lacking transparency. It appears a significant number of people don't
care about artifacts.

That said, JPEG does today support lossless compression, if you really want to
go there. It sort of even supports transparency[1].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772760> for a javascript solution;
other approaches use container formats

------
conradfr
It would have been sooner if 8 bit PNG with alpha transparency had been
implemented in Photoshop like in Fireworks.

------
duncans
I could have done without the colour "correction" nonsense that PNG
introduced: <http://hsivonen.iki.fi/png-gamma/>

------
duiker101
I really wonder why GIFs are still around. Apart for being used as short
videos for funny things they have not a huge use afaik. They really feel like
an old technology. They are also a pain to support on android.

~~~
ben0x539
I wonder what the pain point that is stopping the wider public from switching
to a real video format for those short clips is. Given that real video codecs
have much better compression at comparable quality, is it just the lack of
simple tiny video hosting options comparable to imgur? <video> tags being
harder to use on random posting platforms than <img tags>? Chroma subsampling
"blurring" clips with sharp edges like from cartoons or 2d videogames?
Something less obvious?

~~~
csense
An <img> tag pointing to animated gif should work on every combination of
image host + CMS + browser.

I'm not sure off the top of my head what HTML 5 market share is like (anyone
with recent data want to chime in?), but I'm guessing lots of people are
running browsers that still don't have <video> capability.

~~~
drchaos
<http://caniuse.com/#search=video>

The percentage of users not able to use <video> is roughly equivalent to the
percentage of users running IE8, which is about 20% right now, and probably
will stay there in the near future, as XP users cannot upgrade to IE9 (thanks,
MS!).

The other problem with <video> is that there is still no common format which
every browser supports, so even if you would ignore IE8 (or provide a fallback
via Flash) you'd still have to encode all videos twice (to H.264 and
WebM/VP8).

Sad as it is, but Flash for video and animated GIF will stay with us for some
years.

------
rhokstar
GIF still rules on animation (long live memes!) PNG does not do animation
however (love it for 32bit alpha)

BUT APNG does: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG>

------
hippich
I believe the only reasonable use of GIFs today is to use for all kinds of 1px
gradients for background where you can't use CSS3 for that. And even if image
is big - it might be better off with PNG.

basically, if you use just few colors and no semi-transparency and you picture
is small - yo might be better off with GIF, otherwise - either PNG or JPG
depending on if you need semi-transparency or not, and if you need loss-less
compression or not.

~~~
jsalinas
Actually, PNG 8 is better for that 1px graphics: <http://www.phpied.com/give-
png-a-chance/>

------
milliams
About bloody time.

------
midvar
I wish h264 and the upcoming hevc encoded images would become a real
alternative. far better quality (for pictures especially), at a lower bitrate
from what ive read.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Main_Still_Picture)

------
dlitz
November 5, 1999: Burn All GIFs Day.

[http://web.archive.org/web/19991127200821/http://www.interne...](http://web.archive.org/web/19991127200821/http://www.internetnews.com/wd-
news/article/0,1087,10_232741,00.html)

Anyone else remember this?

------
Tichy
Although I noticed (accidentally) that gif animated boobs seem to become more
popular, that could be a thread to PNG domination.

------
tobyjsullivan
18 years for that transition to happen. That may be the slowest thing to ever
happen on the Internet.

~~~
NelsonMinar
I think IPv6 is slower: 20 years since it started being developed.

------
potomak
That's why I made Draw![1][2] pixel art animation editor!

[1] <http://drawbang.com>

[2] <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drawbang/id578228937>

------
marshallford
Finally.

~~~
gmac
Or: wow! Only now?

~~~
Avshalom
poor support/awareness of animated PNGs has been keeping GIF well represented
for ages

~~~
eggspurt
See <http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/>

~~~
kbrosnan
Which is unsupported in every major browser.

~~~
eggspurt
Finally a feature browsers can compete on! :)

------
martinced
_"The PNG image file format is now more popular than GIF"_... On the Web!

PNG has been more popular than GIF since a very long time for basically
anything non-web needing lossless picture compression.

From smartphones icons to OS icons, software logos and icons, etc. I'd say the
proportion is about 100:1. Actually I was _suprised_ while just running a
"find" on my Linux distro to even find a few .gif files. But thousands of
PNGs, of course.

Screenshots taken from OS X and Linux are saved to PNG files (for OS X it
actually depends on the version of OS X, sometimes PDF are used, but not
GIFs).

And games... Lots of games ship with PNG pictures (as well as jpg of course).
But GIF? Common...

It's actually a very, very long time that PNG files are more popular than
GIFs.

Glad to hear that it's now true for the Web too.

~~~
fein
> Screenshots taken from OS X and Linux are saved to PNG files

You can really save screenies in whatever format you like on linux with
imagemagick.

It's just $ import -window root screenshot.<imagetype>

Unless you're referring to whatever the DE has implemented, but I've never
taken an SS without using the terminal, so I have no idea.

~~~
randomdata
I'm sure he is referring to the desktop environment interface, as on OS X you
could do the following to save to whatever format you wish as well:

    
    
      screencapture -tjpg desktop.jpg

------
monsterix
Wonder what happened to the WebP format from Google? Last when I tried using
it, there were no nice image converters that would convert my PNGs into WebP
properly.

Any live websites using it?

~~~
ahoge
Mozilla is still against it. Makes me kinda angry, actually. They killed
MNG/JNG, because it added like 100kB to the installer and because we should
just use Flash instead (seriously). It's now a decade later and we still don't
have a lossy RGBA format.

If quantized PNG8s aren't good enough, you can only use gigantic PNG32 files,
which are over 5 times larger than JNG or WebP files. I've seen websites which
were over 5MB thanks to that limitation. It's ridiculous.

I wish they had at least kept JNG. It's a fairly simple JPG/PNG mashup format.
If you already use JPG and PNG libraries, supporting JNG won't add much
weight.

~~~
monsterix
Actually this is a non-issue. You could always implement comma separated image
fallbacks[1]:

 _background-image: image("wavy.svg", 'wavy.png' , "wavy.gif");_ and so on...

It seems that Google lowered emphasis on the project, or is still working on
it behind-the-scenes. I'd much prefer to have 'less of images' moving over the
web (without cutting back on visuals, you know) and save precious bandwidth.

[1] <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-images/#image-fallbacks>

And then the fact that Google Chrome has over 30% market share. Makes sense to
promote WebP.

~~~
ahoge
That only works for background images. Plus, the UA will send a request for
the webp image even if it can't read the format. It needs the mime type to
figure that out.

~~~
monsterix
Ah yes. Then probably paste image raw data in the second fallback image?
Though I do agree with you that something which benefits the web should be
adopted across the board.

