Nemo in Googleland

[John C]

For those of you like myself who don't actually visit the Google homepage, this evening (15 October) might be a not-so-bad time to check it out.

[Yoc]

Thanks John.
Interesting, it's an animated PNG file.  I wasn't aware you could animate those.

[John C]

Ah.  I didn't even check that, and it's the first I've heard of such a beast, too.  And checking on that, yeah, APNG is a thing, though it's not sanctioned by the PNG standards people and support is spotty.  So if you looked with Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome (oddly) without the right plug-in, I apologize for the confusion.

(I assumed it was typical dynamic web stuff, like Google Maps.  Go figure.  Or maybe it did work for you, since the Wikipedia page says that there's a standard library to "fake" an APNG for browsers that don't support it.)

Oh!  That explains the animated site icons I've seen...

[Yoc]

Considering we use an animated GIF file for our banner I wonder what the advantages to a PNG file would be?

[John C]

Grand scheme, probably nothing.  Functionally, they look the same, just frames joined into a quasi-movie.  PNG does have compression, though, so one can cram more frames into the same size file, for what that's worth.

But also don't forget the potential downside, that only Firefox and Opera have in-built support.

[Yoc]

Right, and that's the end of that idea.  Staying with GIF...

[JonTheScanner]

My recollection is that GIF files are limited in the number of colors (256 I think). PNG are essentially unlimited as far as the human eye interacting with the computer screen goes.