Are PNGs relatively IE safe as background images?

Post by **Don Chambers** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 2:35 am

Transparent PNGS will, at some point in the future, no longer be a problem in web design thanks to the release of IE7. However, there are millions of people still using <ie7.

I have personally experienced a lot of problems using transparent PNGS as foreground images... but it occurs to me, that this has never been a problem when they were background images.

I'm working up a new template. So far, I am sticking with either GIFs or JPGs.

Is it reasonable safe to make all BACKGROUND images PNGs, or am I better off sticking with GIFs & JPGS (no transparancy on jpg)???

Post by **Don Chambers** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:34 am

Anyone?

Post by **garvinhicking** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:43 am

Hi!

I'd not use transparent PNGs for any mainstream theme that IE6 users might still use, for as long as IE8 is not out.

Regards,
Garvin

Post by **Don Chambers** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 3:36 pm

Thanks Garvin. I was hoping background images were safe. Thought I recalled something about foreground PNGs being the most trouble when they lacked dimensions, and dimensions are not usually given for background images. Back to GIFs or JPGs I guess!!

Post by **garvinhicking** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:37 pm

Hi!

You might remember this from the "browsercompatibility" plugin! This one creates trouble with transparent PNGs without dimensions, because it doesn'T properly scale/rescale it. I don't even know if the browsercompatibility plugin can deal with transparent background images, since it only listens on all <img> tags of a page...

Regards
Garvin

SenorKaffee · Post by **SenorKaffee** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:32 pm

PNGs are always a little tricky. Not because of the transparency, I had more problems with the gamma correction data that can be saved in them. Let´s say that the interpretation of this data can have some... interesting effects. o_O