In Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report Opera and PNG, he wrote, "It also emphasizes that IE/Win is alone among modern browsers in its lack of true support for the 1995–96 PNG image standard." Wrong, wrong, wrong. Boyo is he wrong.
In the US, go to your local BMW dealership and ask to see their Virtual Sales Center (BMW's name for their kiosk). The navigation interface graphics are done entirely with PNG images BECAUSE IE/Win supports PNG alpha transparency. And I built this interface a couple of years ago, so it's not something new.
You can see an example of how to apply the alpha filter here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/filter/Alpha.htm. The html / CSS looks something like this:
‹DIV ID="oFilterDIV" STYLE="position:absolute; top:50px; left:10px; width:240px; height:160px; padding:10px; font:bold 13pt verdana; background:green;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha( Opacity=100, FinishOpacity=0, Style=1, StartX=0, FinishX=100, StartY=0, FinishY=100)"›
This is the DIV object content.‹/DIV›
I don't know if Netscape 6+ or Opera supports MS filters now or not--I haven't had any reason to experiment and find out since I haven't needed them for web work, just for a kiosk interface where the browser is absolutely controlled. Now I'm wondering: I wonder if they do ... I'll just add it to my list of things I want to experiment with ... (I need about four additional hours per day with no corresponding need for additional sleep!)
Posted by Lee at May 25, 2003 01:12 AM | TrackBack> Wrong, wrong, wrong. Boyo is he wrong.
No, he is right; MS does not fully support PNG, not even in the latest IE incarnations. What you are referring to is the MS-only way of putting an Aplha on images through CSS, and has got nothing to do with PNG in itself which has got Alpha support in its native format. Netscape, Opera, Mozilla all have better PNG support, and in this case Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves.
Posted by: Alexander Johannesen at May 26, 2003 05:36 AM