(Taking Taco's suggestion, and mentioning this here rather than trying to converse on the Wiki's talk pages.) Patrick, Mojca, Taco, and other Wiki-people: The rendered text on the Wiki has suddenly become ugly -- letters are thinner (too thin!), and the edges of the text are a bit ragged. My guess is that this is a result of the interaction between anti-aliasing and setting the transparency to true -- everything that was anti-aliased to gray is now also set transparent, and thus becomes white when displayed. I don't know if this is browser-dependent or not, but it's repeatable in both Opera and Firefox, on my (Windows) computer. Given this problem, I would recommend reverting to the non-transparent version. - Brooks
Brooks Moses wrote:
(Taking Taco's suggestion, and mentioning this here rather than trying to converse on the Wiki's talk pages.)
Patrick, Mojca, Taco, and other Wiki-people:
The rendered text on the Wiki has suddenly become ugly -- letters are thinner (too thin!), and the edges of the text are a bit ragged.
My guess is that this is a result of the interaction between anti-aliasing and setting the transparency to true -- everything that was anti-aliased to gray is now also set transparent, and thus becomes white when displayed.
That is not necessarily be the problem, after all: it should become partially transparant a.k.a. grey ;-). It could just be that the pngalpha engine is a bit more spindly then the normal one (the effect is the same of course, but for a different reason)
I don't know if this is browser-dependent or not, but it's repeatable in both Opera and Firefox, on my (Windows) computer.
But I suddenly wonder how the wiki will look in IE. IE doesnt support transparent png. I'll try to find and IE somewhere for checking. Taco
Taco Hoekwater wrote:
But I suddenly wonder how the wiki will look in IE. IE doesnt support transparent png. I'll try to find and IE somewhere for checking.
Jikes! Big black rectangles instead of the contents of the image! I guess reverting to non-transparent is unavoidable now. Unless there is a possibility to use .GIF instead of .PNG? Taco
Hi there,
Jikes! Big black rectangles instead of the contents of the image! I guess reverting to non-transparent is unavoidable now.
I have reverted the gs-device back to png256.
Unless there is a possibility to use .GIF instead of .PNG?
I'll try that one soon on the sandbox. Patrick PS: Thanks for reporting. -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net
Taco Hoekwater wrote:
Taco Hoekwater wrote:
But I suddenly wonder how the wiki will look in IE. IE doesnt support transparent png. I'll try to find and IE somewhere for checking.
Jikes! Big black rectangles instead of the contents of the image! I guess reverting to non-transparent is unavoidable now. Unless there is a possibility to use .GIF instead of .PNG?
Taco
I'm sorry. It was my request to use pngalpha for figures on background that is not white (for "the question marks" for example, for math inside tables with gray background, ...), so if anyone is to blame: please, blame me! On white background, the rendered text shouldn't change, so the only difference would be on darker backgrounds, where fonts probably really appear too thin because of anti-aliasing. I didn't notice any weird functionality on IE since I don't use it, but Taco's observation is true (sad enough). No, please, no GIFs!!! If it has to be, let's keep opaque PNGs, GIFs are the very last option. Besides the licence (I don't know anything about it), the number of colors is limited, they aren't compressed (as PNGs are) and I would say (althoug I don't claim it and I didn't take time to check) that transparency is implemented as a "transparent color" rather than transparent gradient in GIFs. Shame on Microsoft! Mojca
Hi Mojca, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
I'm sorry. It was my request to use pngalpha for figures on background that is not white (for "the question marks" for example, for math inside tables with gray background, ...), so if anyone is to blame: please, blame me!
I'll blame Microsoft. Of course, Patrick could keep on using PNG transparancy with a "IE renders this page badly, please upgrade to a decent browser" remark in the side bar. I certainly wouldn't mind, but I'm not sure how many of the reader potential of the wiki are IE based.
I didn't notice any weird functionality on IE since I don't use it, but Taco's observation is true (sad enough).
I also believe png is generally the better format, but because I think you are a bit misinformed, here is some extra information:
No, please, no GIFs!!! If it has to be, let's keep opaque PNGs, GIFs are the very last option. Besides the licence (I don't know anything about it),
Gif is free, these days (the patent is finally expired)
the number of colors is limited,
True in general, but it has the same number of colors (256) that ghostscripts "png256" device that the wiki uses. (more colors leads to larger file sizes, and usually unneeded on the web).
they aren't compressed (as PNGs are)
Gif images really are compressed, and in fact quite well, using a variable-length LZW algorithm (that's what the patent was for). Add to that that gif has a smaller file format overhead then PNG, so it usually performs better (smaller files) than png for really small images (icon/bullet size). Also, gif supports animation. Gif format has it's uses in web design. A 1 by 1 pixel transparant image, stored as compactly as possible (gimp 2.0): 43 bytes empty.gif 95 bytes empty.png A 32 by 32 pixels 256 color rainbow (from the pngsuite): 1729 bytes basi3p08.gif 1527 bytes basi3p08.png
and I would say (althoug I don't claim it and I didn't take time to check) that transparency is implemented as a "transparent color" rather than transparent gradient in GIFs.
You are right. (if you want to, you can do transparancy in that way inside a PNG image as well, btw. It allows smaller file sizes than a full alpha channel).
Shame on Microsoft!
Very, very, very much so! Taco
Hi,
Of course, Patrick could keep on using PNG transparancy with a "IE renders this page badly, please upgrade to a decent browser" remark in the side bar. I certainly wouldn't mind, but I'm not sure how many of the reader potential of the wiki are IE based.
I don't like this kind of user education. Even though I fully agree that IE is stupid most of the time, I try to be > 98% compatible with the users' browsers. My highly inaccurate statistic says that 15% use IE. Patrick -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net
Patrick Gundlach wrote:
Hi,
Of course, Patrick could keep on using PNG transparancy with a "IE renders this page badly, please upgrade to a decent browser" remark in the side bar. I certainly wouldn't mind, but I'm not sure how many of the reader potential of the wiki are IE based.
A very dirty trick (and expensive as well, not worth the effort in my opinion) would be to render both pictures and show the opaque one if IE is detected.
I don't like this kind of user education. Even though I fully agree that IE is stupid most of the time, I try to be > 98% compatible with the users' browsers. My highly inaccurate statistic says that 15% use IE.
15??? Forget the Linux users + Programmers (which often coincide with the first group) + universities and calculate the average again. I haven't seen any computer yet from people outside the "informatics" with a "decent browser" installed. It's true that they are mostly not interested in ConTeXt, but who knows ... I just came from a summer school with "bioinformatics" being one of the topics covered (and also present in the title). The computers used there were enviably well configured/protected, but ... no decent browser and no way to install one. And, Taco, thanks for info. I never use gif (I'm not good in making animations and don't have proper tools anyway), I even (mis)use png for storing photos; I just see people using gif for photos and jpg for two-color logos. Mojca
Hi,
A very dirty trick (and expensive as well, not worth the effort in my opinion) would be to render both pictures and show the opaque one if IE is detected.
Too much hassle for a small gain.
I don't like this kind of user education. Even though I fully agree that IE is stupid most of the time, I try to be > 98% compatible with the users' browsers. My highly inaccurate statistic says that 15% use IE.
15???
Did I mention that they are highly inaccurate? :-) Patrick -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net
Patrick Gundlach wrote:
Did I mention that they are highly inaccurate? :-)
Hm, do you have your percentages linked to page refreshes? I'm betting that 85% of your page hits is from just a few people reloading the 'Recent Changes', and that those people just happen to be either Linux or MacOSX based. Taco
Hi,
Hm, do you have your percentages linked to page refreshes?
I don't know. I use awstats. Never botherd to find out how the percentage is calculated.
I'm betting that 85% of your page hits is from just a few people reloading the 'Recent Changes', and that those people just happen to be either Linux or MacOSX based.
Right. I guess that the 85% are Adam, Brooks, Henning, Mojca, you and I (...) :-) Seriously: I just wanted to point out that I think that the number of IE users are > 1% and therefore I don't want to break IE support too much. I don't care if it is 15% or 70%. And I don't really care about web statistics at all. Patrick (did I say 'highly inaccurate'?) -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net
Taco Hoekwater wrote:
Jikes! Big black rectangles instead of the contents of the image! I guess reverting to non-transparent is unavoidable now. Unless there is a possibility to use .GIF instead of .PNG?
IE7 seems to fix that (however, it's still in beta and not shipped by default): http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263.aspx I like the comment there: Alpha fixed in Beta. Time for Gamma :) However, I found something more interesting that fixes the problem already in IE 5.5 and could be added to wiki (to sandbox first): http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pngtestfixed.htm I tried it with IE and it seems to work (except the fact that SP2 tends to block JavaScript). My example (copy-paste from their code): http://pub.mojca.org/tex/wiki/png/ Another remark: take a look at the coat of arms on http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenija (also the image on the above address on mojca.org). It's transparent, but nevertheless on white background in IE. I guess it was rendered by wikipedia. The original version (if you click on it) is on gray background - don't ask me for the reason - I imported a PDF file with Adobe Photoshop and "black magic" => gray background in IE. Mojca
Hi,
However, I found something more interesting that fixes the problem already in IE 5.5 and could be added to wiki (to sandbox first): http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pngtestfixed.htm
honestly: also implementing things in JS scares me a bit. I currently have many different places in the mediawiki software where I applied changes: the css, the code itself, my extensions, xml-stylesheets. Thats already much for me... Once I manage to upgrade to 1.5 MW software, I'll take another look. Thanks for the pointer, I have saved it on the 'contextgarden' wiki page. Patrick -- ConTeXt wiki and more: http://contextgarden.net
participants (4)
-
Brooks Moses -
Mojca Miklavec -
Patrick Gundlach -
Taco Hoekwater