.png advantages

[jmcdonald21]

Are there advantages to using .png instead of jpeg or .gif?

[chong]

png is similar to gif, but with higher color depth. It has an independent alpha channel (gif assigns one of its unused colors as transparent). But cross browser compatibility is still an issue (with regards to transparency).

[Robert Wellock]

PNG generally are superior to both GIF and JPG though don't do animation.

However, the JPG is lossy so thus is normally better suited for photographs where small filesize counts on the web.

[felgall]

Once IE supports PNG properly (and IE7 is supposed to include proper support from what I have read) and once enough people migrate to that browser from the ones that don't properly support PNG then it will probably be the best format to use for most images. Until then stick with GIF and JPG.

[Robert Wellock]

It is only Alpha transparency the M$ cannot do and PNG-8 Transparency is totally safe. The *.gif is such a shoddy outdated format is should hardly ever be used unless you want animation.

Summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

[jmcdonald21]

Can someone give me an example of this transparency problem and how to get around it. For instance, how would I have to save my .png so there is no problem?

[felgall]

The problem isn't with the png file, the problem is the web browser. To0 fix it simply use a version 7 or 8 browser.

[Mongus]

Here's some info on how to make it work in IE:

http://javasource.org/pngInfo/

[mtgentry]

I think a new era in bad web design will take place once IE fully supports PNG transparency.

Imagine every image on the web with a bloated drop shadow. Yuck.