[Clipart] Re: The PNG problem in Windows Internet Explorer

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> writes:

> From that website it says it only works on IE 5.5 and greater. 

Have you tried using earlier versions of IE than 5.5?  They're junk.
5.5 was the first reasonably useable version and has been out for
almost five years now.

We don't want the site to be totally unviewable in earlier versions,
but if the background colour of the images is off, that seems like a
pretty minor problem for a browser that old.  (And I suspect it's not
our worst problem; the CSS layout probably breaks too, in 4.x if not
in 5.0.  I'm finally breaking down and getting VMWare workstation (not
primarily for OCAL purposes, but once I get it I'll have it); when I
get it, I'll be setting up images with different versions of IE, and
then I can do up screenshots showing what we look like in IE3, IE4,
and IE5.0.  I bet it won't be pretty, but we'll see.)

> Thus, I still think it better to convert images server-side to
> support more of the IEs.

Ultimately, yes, but recall that the pngcrush trick doesn't solve this
problem, like it did the other one.  Giving the thumbnails a solid
background color would cause them to look the same in IE as in any
other browser, but there are several problems with that, not least
that we'd have to redo all the thumbnails any time we decide to change
the look of the site; additionally, those of us who use non-white
backgrounds and leave page colours off most of the time wouldn't care
for it very much (though we're a small minority).

I'm not convinced the Javascript and "behaviors" hacks are the right
solution either.  Maybe.  I'm still pondering this issue.  IMO, it's
something we do need to think about.

It *may* be possible to get the images to appear transparent in
browsers that support it, and have a white background in IE.  If so,
that might be the best compromise.

-- 
$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,"ten.thgirb\@badanoj$/ --";$\=$ ;-> ();print$/