"PNG not wildly successful"
Submitted by Terry Hancock on Thu, 2006-09-28 17:10.
Vote! 0
I guess that depends on your definition of "wildly".
PNG is the default and only seriously reliable format used by the Python Imaging Library (i.e. it's basically the "native" format). Inkscape only exports bitmaps as PNG. And so on. And of course, PNG is the only widely used format that can represent true-color images without artifacts and data loss (the big problems with JPEG). PNG is my personal favorite for storing bitmaps, and has very good support and fidelity between many different programs (there are a few problems—but I have more trouble with GIFs and JPEGs, due to fundamental limitations of those formats).
On the internet, popularity has been less evident, but only because of the extreme conservativism that the existence of older web browsers introduces. Internet Explorer and Mozilla both had significant PNG display bugs until quite recent versions. However, the old versions are dying out, and most of the web-viewing public now views PNGs without even thinking (or probably knowing) about it.
GIFs remain popular for animation. The MNG standard (the animated version of PNG) never saw much support, and animated GIFs are still the easiest and most portable form of animation on the web (despite the recent surge in Flash popularity).
The limitation of GIFs to 8-bit palette graphics, though, is a pretty serious limitation for any serious artwork, and it makes GIFs awkward to use. I get a lot of mileage from JPEGs, especially by exploiting the characteristics of their lossy compression algorithm (e.g. you can get some cool fringe effects simply by overcompressing the JPEG, and get a smaller file to boot), but JPEG is not a good general purpose format.
PNG was needed for purely technical reasons. Not to defend Unisys, but I'm actually kind of glad that we had obstacles that pushed us to use a newer and better format ("it's an ill wind...").
I would call PNG a very successful format!