Comments on: Do you use PNGs?

By: ShelleWeb

ShelleWeb — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:33:55 +0000

As has been mentioned previously, PNGs can be used when designing for IE6 in mind, and I have been using PNGs over GIFs (unless animated) for years now too. This sure has helped on many occasions in cutting down the overall size of web pages.

I still do cater for IE6 users, as I do all users, as with my role I need to consider equal accessibility to online services for all people, and IE6 is still used by enough people to warrant the extra time and effort to meet their needs. Although we regularly monitor the statistics, for each new development and upgrade, to ascertain our audiences needs.

So, as has been said above, research your audience, and factor in the cost of catering for IE6 against the cost of not!

By: Ryan Williams

Ryan Williams — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:06:51 +0000

Yep, IE6 is still a large part of the audience and while I have absolute empathy for those who want to drop support, the simple fact of the matter is that you’re not putting out a quality product if there’s no IE6 support there. Not getting it looking exactly the same as in other browsers is one thing, but to not even test in IE6 and ensure basic support is a terrible idea IMO if it’s for a commercial project. Personal projects? Eh, who cares.

With regards to PNGs, everyone should be using them now for the graphics that you’d have used GIFs for in the past — they have made GIFs completely obsolete and there are literally no downsides if you don’t use the alpha transparency of PNG-24 (PNG-8′s GIF-like hard transparency works fine in IE6). In almost all cases a PNG will be considerably smaller in file size than its GIF counterpart.

Note that you should experiment with both PNG-8 and PNG-24 in Photoshop as they use different algorithms, and certain patterns (mostly gradients) are smaller PNG-24.

By: Hunter

Hunter — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:54:13 +0000

Sadly, I was digging through my analytics on some of the sites I manage and still had about 15 – 20% IE 6 usage. More than Firefox and Safari combined, so for those who are saying to push their audience to it- it just not that simple from a business standpoint. You have a site that looks weird or doesn’t render correctly, you are risking losing a sale or lead or some other business transaction that may be the whole reason for your site. Try telling the CEO that the reason their leads are down with their new site and they are getting complaints is that the users need to upgrade their browsers and that you shouldn’t be developing for the browser used by 20% of their customer base. (and dang all if those IE6 users didn’t have a 30% higher conversion rate to boot!)

Just a reminder to really seek out the answers as to whether or not it is worth it to support IE- you may find you still should or you may find you have the data to justify kissing it bye-bye. But much credit to Digg, YouTube and others that are taking the lead to remind people to upgrade. I look forward to the day I can freely use PNGs without hacks that jack everything else up.

Until then, I’m still in GIFville.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:59:33 +0000

For me, it depends on what I have in front of me. Some themes on WordPress may have a thumbnail resizer that will only work with PNG’s, some with only JPG’s. I do try to put emphasis on using PNG’s as they are more lightweight, you can use transparency and amongst other things, I just love using them. As far as IE6 users, any way that we can encourage people to upgrade is always a good thing.

By: Lorraine Nepomuceno

Lorraine Nepomuceno — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:23:12 +0000

@Daoro and @Markus, thanks for pointing out that it's the PNG transparency that isn't supported by IE6. @Michael Aringer, thanks for mentioning tweakpng, which I hadn't heard of before. For those interested, you can get this PNG editing tool here. @David, I agree that as designers we should always keep our target demographics in mind. And thanks, everyone else, for your comments- I do feel more confident to use PNGs now.

By: David

David — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:32:03 +0000

I use PNGs if I am needing some subtle transparency or if the file size is smaller than GIFs. IE6 is used by a small percentage of people and they usually come from specific demographics. If you aren’t targeting those demographics, then I don’t see the harm in using PNGs.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:10:33 +0000

If it is simple enough to make a site backwards compatible (such as the conditional statements) then why not ?
You would never want to dump that much of your audience unless it is a developer/designer targeted site, then tell them to get a better browser =p

By: Michael Aringer

Michael Aringer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:38:54 +0000

Yes, I do – after reediting them with the tool tweakpng!

By: Tweets that mention Do you use PNGs? | Devlounge -- Topsy.com

Tweets that mention Do you use PNGs? | Devlounge -- Topsy.com — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:50:37 +0000

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By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:41:15 +0000

I’ve been using pngs for a couple of years because of the cool effects you can create using transparencies. I have previously used pngFix on projects but on my latest project I’m going to experiment by creating a lo-fi IE6 version of the site and using using universal IE6 css (http://code.google.com/p/universal-ie6-css/). They will still get all the content but it will just be mostly dull looking text.

Also there will be a message to poor IE6 user saying the site is best viewed on a modern browser and to start hounding their IT Department to upgrade.

By: Timothy Long

Timothy Long — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:09:18 +0000

I no longer cater to the IE6 bunch. It is admittedly with a bit of laziness and egotism that I gave up on them, but look, the user who sees no problem with manning an obsolete browser is likely to miss the intricacies of a well-designed website anyway. Sure, that’s probably overgeneralizing, but I think it’s time to bite the bullet and think futuristically.

By: Markus Thömmes

Markus Thömmes — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:48:22 +0000

As Daoro already mentioned you can use PNG in IE. Even in IE6. Just remove the “gamma” value from it’s Metas and you will have all PNG displayed properly. Only the transparency needs a fix but PNG8 also has advantages in size.