[Clipart] thank-you for use of a graphic

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

elaine <webwize at gmail.com> writes:

> It's very interesting about IE. 

IE7 will fix this.  I've played around with the public beta, and the
transparency issue is, as near as I can determine, completely fixed.

(The CSS issues are not all completely fixed, but that's another
matter.)

Of course, IE7 has not been officially released yet, so you can't
really expect your site visitors to upgrade to it.

> What is even more interesting is that on my MAC using 4 different
> browsers : Safari, IE, Firefox, and Netscape, the PNG background is
> white.

Is it white, or transparent?  If it's transparent, it will show up
white if the page background behind it is white, but if you put it on
a black page, the background would then be black.

And yes, the Mac version of IE gets this right.  It's essentially a
different codebase from the Windows version, so it doesn't share the
same bugs.  Netscape got PNG support right in version 4 IIRC (might've
been version 3 even; anyway, a long time ago in web terms, back when
CSS support was still a messy hack that depended on Javascript), and
both Safari and Firefox are far too new to have ever had a problem
with it in the first place.

> As an aside, I used another free clipart image taken from another
> site, a transparent gif of stars, and on the 4 browsers on my computer
> the stars blended perfectly with the cream background. On some other
> people's computers, white edges appeared against the cream-colored
> background. I decided to abandon the cream background, (not a web safe
> color), and go for white. Then the stars blended in to the background.
> 
> Tricky stuff.

.gif transparency is a different kind of transparency.  Rather than
having a full alpha channel, there's just a certain index in the
pallette that's rendered as fully transparent.  That's a clever kludge
in some ways, and it reduces filesizes, but it doesn't mix well with
anti-aliasing.

Alpha-channel transparency (like .png has) does go well with
anti-aliasing.  Index transparency (like .gif has) does not.
(Technically, there is also such a thing as an indexed .png, but
it's not very common; generally a .png will use the alpha channel.)

If the white edges around the stars blended well with the cream
background on your computer, but not on other computers, it could be
because the colors on your monitor are calibrated differently and
lighter.  (In particular, the cream color may be showing up lighter
for you than on other people's computers, which would cause the white
to blend with it better.  Or, your display may just have less color
discrimination, particularly if it's a laptop or LCD.)

> The worst experience was looking at the site on an old computer in
> IE with a jalopy of a monitor. the light cream background became a
> darkish drab sepia and every possible defect showed. 

256-color mode is never going to look as nice as a modern, true-color
display.  When I test sites for compatibility with 256-color systems,
I generally test them for usability and legibility, not for beauty.

-- 
Open Clip Art Library:  Drawing Together
http://www.openclipart.org/