Please Read - Png

A while ago, somebody suggested using .PNG for my comics in order to reduce bandwidth. In the past, I didn't know how to properly manipulate images to take full advantage of the .PNG format, but today I made a .PNG version of my largest comic (memory wise), and it reduced its size by 58 kb, from 140kb to 82kb (I've attached the 82kb version). As it turns out, I can't find a comic I've made that can't have its file size reduced by converting it to .PNG.

This sounds like a sweet deal, but there's a downside. A dark, grim, scary downside that makes squirrels cry: Not every web browser can see .PNG files. I don't want to deprive anyone of EGS, so I need to know: Can you or can you not see the attached image? If you can't see it, and you can't vote in this poll, please e-mail at darkshive@hotmail.com

I can see it. I have PNG support due to this one program I have. How easy is PNG to manipulate with a basic Paint program? And is the color consistency diminished at all?

EDIT - It checks out quite well, excellent dpi, and Paint is fine with it.

Huge yay for lossless compression!

It is seen, and it is good.

Somehow I'm surprised that that image is the biggest.

Lots of text = huge memory usage, sadly.

How come black text takes up more space than a great amount of various colors?

It does seem counterintuitive.

The more random and chaotic the placement of various colors in a gif, the more memory it's going to take. Text makes for some very "random and chaotic" placement, as do color gradients, etc.

Incidently, "black text" is actually several different shades of grey (12 shades in my comic, but that's just because I reduce greyscale comics to 12 colors)

Cool. I always wondered why the text in the comic looked like that close-up :)

ah its all pixely, thats not good.

One thing you could do for those with browsers that can't handle PNGs... put a link under each comic that will pop up a GIF version. That way the vast majority who can see the PNG will use less bandwidth, and those who can't can still access the comic. Since all that would really cost is a few more megs on the host, which doesn't really cost much compared to the bandwidth, everyone would be reasonably happy.

Originally posted by Major Kerina
Cool. I always wondered why the text in the comic looked like that close-up :)

It's a process known as anti-aliasing. Normally, when you draw a line (or text, circle, etc.), you will see the "stairstep" of where the pixels change. (also known as "the jaggies"...). Anti-aliasing gets around that by having a level where it graduates from one color to another.

In this case, it's from black to white, so you end up with different levels of grey. If it were red to white, you'd end up with different levels of pink.

In the included graphic, the first "A" was anti-aliased. The second one had it turned off, so you can see the jaggies.

For more information, please check out your local library... <grin>

Meow!

All browsers (especially version 5 browsers) can read PNG, but some ghetto versions of netscape 4.x can't, but can be fixed by installing quicktime.

Here's my little image format comparison I use on Keenspace:
Use PNG when the image contains sharp details (paletted or truecolor) and you might need transparancy(or alpha blending)
Use JPG when the image doesn't contain sharp details(truecolor) and don't need transparancy
Use GIF when you need something animated or transparant with a maximum of 256 colors.

AND...

Never "dither" a gif, if you have to do this, the compression is destroyed.
Likewise, never try to get "perfect" images from jpg by making it not compress it at all... I hate half meg images.

PNG is a W3C standard, so it should be in all version 5 and later browsers. Internet Explorer doesn't support the alpha blending (still), but there is a nice hack for it that works in IE5.5+ (I use this hack on guide.keenspace.com too), Mozilla and Opera support PNG fully. .. Even WebTV does, and that's freaking scarey.

If you download Quicktime it will display the .PNG file in your browser.

i can see it... but it took a long time to load... this may or may not be due to the fact that i'm on a 56k connection...

All clear from here, Dan! But I do have one tiny question...
In the background, behind the large portion of text, am I seeing things, or is that what I think it is? I would really appreciate it if you guys would take a look and tell me if you can see it too; otherwise I might have to have myself committed...

THANKS! :cheerful:

I saw that image in the archives but I still can't make it out. Someone dig up the reaction thread to that comic! *adopts nasal voice* Uncle must do reeeseeeaaarch.

thats a hint of ellens future torment. duh.

Yeah, I guess it does kinda look like Ellen (at first I thought it was Grace...HEY STOP LAUGHING!). But whatever the hell it is, it looks downright depressing. I guess this is Dan's own brand of subliminal messaging? I wonder if the next one will be telling us to sell all our belongings and give the cash to EGS, and effectively becoming brainwashed EGS zombie-slaves?

Whoops! Too late! :robot:

remember real early on? the one entiteled: 'theres a secret in that last pannel'? theres a pic of ellen in there as well. she just looked different

My web browser (IE 5.1 for Mac OS X ) is stupid and can't see .png files by themselves, yet can see them when they're embedded in a page-display for some reason. So I can't see your attatchment, but I'd still be able to read EGS when it's on the main-page, most likely. 8-Bit Theater uses .png's a lot, and I see it just fine.



(Edited to remove stupid, unintended smiley.)

:clown:


Hiya Dan! Long time no write.

I too can see the PNG!

Also-- Have you tried "saving for the web" out of photoshop? I saved out the attached image as a "gif 32 dithered". It's a little grainy, but it's only 55kb.

Tigger

The color is washed out too and Ellen's face looks weird in that gif version.

If you max the compression factor, you can squeeze out another 969 bytes. :)

Originally posted by T'Renn
One thing you could do for those with browsers that can't handle PNGs... put a link under each comic that will pop up a GIF version. That way the vast majority who can see the PNG will use less bandwidth, and those who can't can still access the comic. Since all that would really cost is a few more megs on the host, which doesn't really cost much compared to the bandwidth, everyone would be reasonably happy.

I second T'Renn's idea if it is feasible. For various reasons, not everyone has the latest browser. I can view them, but there was a time I couldn't.

I do want to say I appreciate that you are asking this. I can remember one web comic I used to read for a time that switched over with a "It's PNG now, deal with it" attitude. And it was about that time I decided that comic wasn't worth reading any longer.

Oh... here's a neat thing you must try if you are using adobe anywhere along the line (because it doesn't compress pngs well at all.) Look for a utility called pngcrush, also another one called pngrewrite.

To squeeze the absolute max out of it, run through pngrewrite (which will strip out ancillary chunks and reduce wasted palette space) then run pngcrush in brute force mode. I've reduced most png's by 30% that way.

Neither of these utilities affect the output image at all.

As for "PNG now, deal." I really don't understand why some people insist on holding onto old browsers. I can see if they use a hand-me-down PC and don't want to spend half the day downloading IE6 or Mozilla (get opera instead yo ^^ ) There are some people who use Netscape 3.

X_x ... people I used to work for still used Netscape 3 when it was the year 2000.

Since Mozilla and IE5.5, both browsers render pages nearly identical except for different fonts. IE6.0 in strict compliance mode and Mozilla in no-quirks mode (HTML DTD required) will render pages identical. It's only "error correction to compensate for author error/laziness" that makes the pages look different. I actually find something that I code will look different in IE6 than it will in Mozilla 1.3, but the Opera 6 version will look identical to the Mozilla version.

Meh, at any rate, the person who writes the website is under no obligation to support the 0.05% of users who refuse to use a version 5 browser. However since Dan is using PHP, he can grab the browser user agent and have -bad- browsers show the gif version. (This assumes the person running the bad browser also isn't running Norton Internet Security or other paranoid firewall.)

Originally posted by Emoore
My web browser (IE 5.1 for Mac OS X ) is stupid and can't see .png files by themselves, yet can see them when they're embedded in a page-display for some reason. So I can't see your attatchment, but I'd still be able to read EGS when it's on the main-page, most likely. 8-Bit Theater uses .png's a lot, and I see it just fine.


Maybe the forum isn't sending the mime header for png and is leaving the browser to figure it out (when it's a img tag, the browser already knows it's an image and knows to inline it), but without the mime tag it will probably try to download it and play it with something associated on the system.

Oh and apparently Microsoft isn't supporting the Mac IE anymore ... there's something better on the Mac, but I forget what it's called at the moment...

gnuh... sniffle....

stop it.

png is good though. (about time)

sniffle...

grr... danwillpay

Is something wrong Imperito? :(

It's been a while since you've been here...

yeh, I know, I'd been following the strips but kind dropped off the boards. Then the university kicked me out (something about summer, whatever that means) and all of a sudden I've nothing to do that isn't mind numbingly boring.

Suggestions: IMAX movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, sketching, writing, lawn tending, video games, or squirrel watching.

Are you ok with the PNG formatt?

The problem with PNGs is that support is so spotty. For example, IE 5 will support it on PCs, but won't if you're running PocketPC 2000 or 2002 on a PDA. It also won't work on any kind of system that runs Windoze out of ROM (such as the WinTerms I see popping up all over the place) because they don't include PNG support (and lots of other things) to reduce ROM sizes.
I really like the idea of having a link to a more standard format available somewhere.

I also like the idea of you getting onto a server that appreciates the fact that bandwidth = readers = goodness. (I know you're working on that, Dan)

I think you should go with PNGs...
After all, there's always Opera (http://www.opera.com), Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org) and the like that support PNG without much problems (even the alpha-transparency that IE STILL cannot see. Example: http://www.labofabyll.com/Phantom/Alphatrans.png).

Originally posted by Maboroshi Abyll
Example: http://www.labofabyll.com/Phantom/Alphatrans.png).

Yeeee... Mozilla displays it goodness. :D

I like the GIF idea... It'd be pretty simple to whack up a shell script to both post the PNG, convert it to a GIF then put that up as well:


#!/bin/bash
pngtopnm $1 | pnmtogif > $1\.gif

# insert upload images code... png is $1, gif is $1\.gif


I've got no idea how you post your comics up, so you'll have to insert the code yourself. A perl script? :D

Heck, improve it with xargs and basename to remove the .png from $1.

(Edit - /me apologises for the momentary bout of geekiness.)

awww too bad html code wasn't on, you could make it work in IE too...

teehee
http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/demo.html

could I make it so the site detects what browser the user is using, and if it's not one of the browsers that is known to accept .PNG, show the alternate image? I suppose I oughtta just look that up in my PHP book, but I'm sleepy, and I'd have to reach ALLLLL the way across my desk... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Mwa? What I am I supposed to be seeing *boggle*?

Well for that we need to know which browsers do not support png ... which is like netscape 4.0 (4.5+ does IIRC), and probably some pocket web browsers on PDA's. I don't know... maybe I should logon with my PPC2000 and see what happens... no wait, the comic wouldnt' FIT on the screen. Never mind. ^^;;;

i can see the png fine....

but the poll appears to be closed.

[edit]--oh, i have to be signed in to vote... silly mango

Mine is officially a SBC Yahoo! browser. I wonder if it's similar to IE...it looks similar...

Originally posted by Major Kerina
Mwa? What I am I supposed to be seeing *boggle*?
If you are using a good browser, you will see that the glow is semi-transparent (looks pretty pretty on darker backgrounds).
If you are using a not so good browser, the sprite will have a white box around it (IE).
If you are using a bad browser, you won't see anything at all.

I can see it, but i prefer the original way, as this showed up in quicktime. Please keep it the same:(

Just a quick word:

If you do the 'browser-detection' thang, please please please make it only change if the browser is known to be incompatible...

Erm... This isn't working. Ok. Try again:

Do this:

If (non-compliant browser)
show gif;


NOT this:

if not (compliant browser)
show gif;


On the surface it may look the same, but there are a wealth of browsers out there, and a 'compliant' browser list may not include all of them (eg. I tend to use a browser called 'links' with graphics-support compiled into it. It's esoteric... Not many non-*nix types have heard of it).

If you specify which browsers AREN'T compatible, you assume everything else is, allowing me to use esoteric browserness. :D

(I know this is only to determine whether the comic is displayed as a GIF or not, but this doubles as a general plea to all web-designers out there. :D )

I saw the IE thing. What's considered a good browser?

mozilla, firebird, pheonix, opera, galeon, konqueror, ...

Who?

Okay, I wanted to see what this alpha blending ppng pics can do and im impressed. Opera is kinda cool (so far iv'e seen lots more functionality than IE) but it lacks the familar feel I have to IE and the scrolling is more granular.

But this is a nice browser, always good to have more than one (I was sent a 400kb browser called enigma which I use when Ie decides not to, and)

Two I havent liked using are Netscapes one an AOL's thingy.

We could get into a discussion of MNG's next. ^^ hehe... Mozilla supports them, IE can be made to add them

http://www.libmng.com/

MNG is the animated version of PNG, for those who cry about not having animated images.

i am posting cause i can see it, and i havent posted and i have to remind dan that the comic kicks ass,:bunny: :bunny: :bunny:

Quick! Let's educate the masses about free (speech/beer) software! :D

Erm... The main battle for the browser appears to be IE (*Sigh*), Opera, and Mozilla (Yay!).

Firebird's a tad flaky at the moment... Best to wait a while...

http://www.mozilla.org
http://www.opera.com

And you already have IE.

(Beware, Opera has ads. But not spy/adware.)

Some more info about png and mng and why they're great:
http://www.libpng.org
I especially like how my 8bit pngs are smaller than other people's gifs. I've seen many jaws drop when I told people that png doesn't always have to be 24bit. :D

Internet Explorer was pitiful and aweful up untill version 4, up untill version 4 (when it got bundled with Win98, and reverse bundled with win95OSR2) prior to that, Netscape was "the winner"

After version 4, all that's really changed is accuracy and standard conformance.

Netscape on the other hand, took a serious risk and threw away Netscape 4, and went on the Mozilla project. Not untill version 0.6 or so did it even have "as good as" IE's support, so it lost the browser war. It's now at 1.4RC3 as of today.

Opera originally started out as a "fits on a floppy disk" lite browser. As of version 6, it supports practically everything Mozilla and IE does. It's layout engine produces results nearly identical to Mozilla. However It's still lacking in the DHTML/Javascript department, and as such, "dynamic" pages don't work the same, or at all. Opera 5 only supported "Dom0"

IE for Mac is a different beast, it doesn't have any of the windows-tie-in the PC-win32 IE does. So in some cases, it support is better (like alpha blended PNG's) and some cases it's worse.

There is a browser on the Mac, that I've only recently heard of, but keep forgetting about (chimera or something?), there is also the Linux/BSD open source browsers that are not based on mozilla.

... ohhh was that a sarcastic comment? ^^;;;

69 DUDES!
...sorry. I can see it. Is that Ellen crying under grace's huge speach bubble? it looks like it but my eyes don't want to see it clearly.

??? What does that have to do with the topic of the thread?

Anyway... I found that with Opera 7, its overall compatibility with most things increased a lot.

bill and tedd's excellent adventure.

if you're really us, what numer am i thinking of?

inspired, of course, by the current votes for yes.

sadly, i thought of the same line when i saw the total...

???

Anyway, that browser under Mac, could that be Safari? I heard, it's pretty good...

Safari sounds right... too mad I don't have a mac to verify.

Indeed, Safari is the Apple built browser for OS X (based off of KDE's Konqueror code).

In fact, I'm using it right now!

And, yes, it handles PNGs beautifully. (And built-in pop-up blocker! Yay Apple!)

Meow!

I have IE version 6.0

And the SBC Browser 1.0.6

I Can't see... *whimpers.* and people keep posting them

*whimpers abit more*

with 81 to 3.... i have the feeling that i'm not going to be able to read EGS anymore soon -.-

Don't worry about it. I don't think Dan'll change it to format that'll exclude people from seeing it. *pets kitty*

I done some research on .png file format

This web site will help tell if you'r web browser can handle it.

www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html)

And if you'r browser can't handle showing .png files then you can grab one of the "helper applications" to help see them.

www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapvw.html (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapvw.html)

I hope this helps J-Kitty

Here's a fairly helpful article on the matter:

http://hackles.org/etc/png.html

I was one of 4 who voted I couldn't see it, but now I can, and I can't change the vote, so I'm posting to let you know.