

SVG vs PNG - kia
http://svgvspng.com/

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cduan
This is based on this comic, I think:

[http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/jpeg-vs-png-
image-q...](http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/jpeg-vs-png-image-
quality-or-bandwidth/5385/)

(It has a link to the original website, but the original website isn't working
for me.)

~~~
lbrandy
I fixed it. Here's the original link:

<http://lbrandy.com/blog/2008/10/my-first-and-last-webcomic/>

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endtime
SVG will make sense once no one is using IE8 anymore. There are solutions like
Raphael, and in fact we use that for our charts, but the interactive stuff is
painfully slow in VML.

Also, PNGs don't look like that.

~~~
tomjen3
The more we use things that IE can't handle, the more likely people are to
upgrade.

Obviously we can't do it on commercial sites, but there is no reason a
personal blog shouldn't insist that every IE user install Chrome Frame to
continue.

~~~
al_james
No reason except that, unless your blog is aimed at the early adopter crowd,
people would go "chrome what?" and go away.

~~~
cookiecaper
"It's a chicken-egg situation", as they say. We have to break it. This cycle
of perpetuating and supporting horrible consumer-grade technologies five, ten,
and fifteen years after its obsolescence _has_ to stop, or it'll always take
fifteen years for any advances to manifest in a meaningful way.

Yes, it can be painful, but the minimal level of such coaxing that has
occurred has been helping -- IE's marketshare is shrinking ever smaller and
currently stands in a place that people would have thought impossible just a
few years ago.

We can make a difference if we try. We just have to be willing to act boldly
wherever we can. Personally, it is my opinion that every developer should find
the investment in eradicating IE extremely worthwhile even if it costs him
some sales or pageviews. The masses have proven that they _will_ switch if
something they want to do asks them to do so, so let's get it started. It is
really silly that we don't do this already.

~~~
al_james
Everyone's mileage will vary. Depending on audience, not supporting IE 6/7/8
may not be an option. Period.

~~~
tomjen3
Which is why I said personal blogs. Nobodys personal blog has to be seen in
IE.

~~~
Macha
That depends: How wide an audience do they want to reach? Sure, they don't
have to support IE, but just like a business, if they want the widest possible
amount of readers, then yes, they should support IE.

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maweaver
A disingenuous comparison; the blurriness on the image on the right isn't from
the scaling, it was blurry to start with. Here is the decoded source image:
<http://imgur.com/2jGWJ>

~~~
Semiapies
How many hours until someone sets up a pro-PNG site with a deliberately crappy
SVG image for comparison?

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alanh
Provocative and increasingly relevant with the advent of high-res displays and
ubiquitous browser zoom. Thanks!

~~~
Goosey
The ubiquitous browser zoom is especially important, thanks for pointing this
out! I do a lot of my web browsing from my couch with an atom powered desktop
hooked up to the TV. I hate eye strain so I browser-zoom constantly.. And it
is really annoying to see images become a blurred mess when I do this. :\

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ggchappell
I agree, certainly, but so far I've been pretty disappointed in free SVG
creation tools. Any suggestions?

~~~
ajuc
Inkscape ?

~~~
ggchappell
You're getting a lot of upvotes. It seems Inkscape is pretty popular. However,
I'm afraid that it has been the source of most of the disappointment I'm
talking about. I found it to be difficult to learn, and difficult to use once
I learned it. It also produced files that wouldn't print. Of course, the
latter might be a problem with my printer driver (or whatever), but,
strangely, when I took an Inkscape-produced SVG, and printed it to a file --
an SVG file -- then the resulting file would print. (This was on Ubuntu, BTW.)

In any case, I'm glad lots of people have found an SVG creation tool that they
like, but I'm still looking.

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nozepas
svg can be pretty slow rendering on some browsers, specially if it's complex.
So it really depends on the usage. It's like comparing it with jpg. It really
depends on what you want to do with it.

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xentronium
What happened to the left guy's head? :(

Comparing vector image to a raster image isn't fair -- difficulty of producing
the former is greater.

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bluesnowmonkey
Or... SVG containing PNG. Go view the source on that guy.

<http://svgvspng.com/en.svg>

~~~
mcobrien
The embedded PNG is used for the scaled up "PNG side", the rest is SVG.

~~~
megaman821
I didn't get that, good catch. It illustrates the scalable aspect of SVG
really well.

