Is PNG Doomed?
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on June 9, 2003 at 5:35:00 PM
If you have noticed (or not), GIF isn't use anywhere that there can be thumbnails made. This is because Unisys still owns the patent to LZW, the compression for GIF and wanted royalties for it. Their patent ends this month. PNG actually has a bunch of problems right now, since GIF is going to be free, why do we need PNG? Sure, PNG gives a bunch of nice things, but it doesn't render alpha channels well. We'll see if it picks up.
Quote
Lilley conceded that PNG is not for everything. Photographs are better saved as JPEG (pronounced "jay peg"), or Joint Photographic Experts Group, files, and GIF offers animation capabilities that PNG was not designed to provide--though a sister specification to PNG called MNG ("ming"), or Multiple-Image Network Graphics, does support animation.