Transparency - graphics question

[Riskbreaker]

Not sure if this is better suited under the PC forum or Off-topic

Can someone move it for me if its in the wrong place? Sorry


Here's a question for any web designers on here. What graphics formats support transparency? And which of those formats can also be used to display upon webpages?

I know that GIF's support transparency, but the lack of colors means that format may be no good to me.

What about PNG? How well supported is it by IE, Netscape, Opera and the like?

Thanks in advance.

[demon9k]

Almost certain png supports transparency but not in IE.

[Lyris]

Yeah, I had awful experiences with PNG in IE. I'm a Mozilla Firebird user and was designing a site that looked pertfect in FB, however when I did a quick check-over in IE, the colors in the PNG file were being shown incorrectly. This made the join between the background and the flat color very obvious, so I had to use a JPEG instead which doesn't look nearly as good. And this was with no transparency being used at all - damn IE ft:

But yes - PNG does support transparency.

[Riskbreaker]

Hmmmm, investigated this a bit further and found that you can apparently force IE to use transparency for PNGs:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/alpha.html

I'll have to give that a go tonight.

So is that it then? Just GIFs and PNGs

Damn IE, may have to use JPEGs after all.

[demon9k]

Excellent that page really helps me too! Thanks for the link