Removal of MNG/JNG support and builds

biesi · Post by **biesi** » June 28th, 2003, 7:13 am

Henke wrote:I dont understand your backward reason explanation. The xpi was made to bring back the mng support in Mozilla after the removal. This xpi dont work in Firebird because Mozilla and Firebird have different files.

Actually, the XPI should work in both Firebird and Mozilla; though I haven't tested it in fb. I will investigate the problem.

as for that other question - yes, putting the imgmng.dll file in there should be enough. compreg.dat should be automatically regenerated.

biesi · Post by **biesi** » June 28th, 2003, 7:17 am

biesi wrote:Actually, the XPI should work in both Firebird and Mozilla; though I haven't tested it in fb. I will investigate the problem.

The XPI (the gcc 3.3 version) works just fine for me on the current MozillaFirebird nightly for linux.

Legoguy · Post by **Legoguy** » June 28th, 2003, 7:45 am

I'll just shut up then for a while.

Although biesi: It won't work on Mozilla Firebird on Windows, missing a mozz.dll, and when I put that from the latest Mozilla build in the components directory, it didn't say it was missing it, it just doesn't work.

old momokatte · Post by **old momokatte** » June 28th, 2003, 8:11 am

tseelee wrote:
momokatte wrote:it will be added back into the trunk when Glenn and Gerard have a patch that meets a few developer requirements.

I think I said that at least a couple of times.

Did you? In this thread? All I see is you misinforming others that no developers have interest in maintaining it.

My recent post is basically a rehash of my previous post on page 7: the developers have made their decision, the issue *is* getting developer/maintainer support, pardon the inconvenience on the trunk, and have a nice day.

tseelee · Post by **tseelee** » June 28th, 2003, 8:22 am

momokatte wrote:
tseelee wrote:I think I said that at least a couple of times.

Did you? In this thread?

See pgs. 7-8.

momokatte wrote:All I see is you misinforming others that no developers have interest in maintaining it.

Oh, I'm sorry about that. I only had the MNG supporters' words to rely on in forming an opinion on the support it's getting from the developers. I'm sorry if I've been mistaken.

Dunderklumpen · Post by **Dunderklumpen** » June 28th, 2003, 10:43 am

Give it a rest. The support is now available as an extension and the support will get back into Firebird when the new code is done and evaluated - is´nt this so?

So whats the fuzz about? An imageformat that very few use, and from what Asa is reporting, very, very few. There has to be much more important things to attend to?

Post by **shadytrees** » June 28th, 2003, 12:33 pm

The fuss seems to be that the extension doesn't work. As I said, this is like the ALT text conflict. We're past adding new information to the argument and have focused on each other's necks.

Homer · Post by **Homer** » June 28th, 2003, 1:39 pm

this whole argument makes me laugh

especially since the person who initiated the decision to remove it was the actual maintainer of the code, which the frothing at the mouth MNG supporters haven't addressed.

The current situation has two possible outcomes:
1) the MNG support gets unbloated and gets included back into the trunk, making everyone happy
2) the MNG support remains bloated and stops being worked on, proving the MNG supporters wrong and justifies eliminating an unmaintained and bloated module

I don't see where this is a bad decision at all.

Relativity_17 · Post by **Relativity_17** » June 28th, 2003, 1:47 pm

What's funny to me... This entire thread, arguing over why MNG should/shouldn't be included in the trunk code, has exceeded 160KB by a long shot.

How bout we just wait and see. I doubt any people actively working on the issue at hand are reading this thread every day thinking, "Oh, they don't want us to restore MNG, I think I'll quit."

Post by **shadytrees** » June 28th, 2003, 7:50 pm

They're thinking: "These people are weird. Marking MozillaZine Forums on my "Sites Not To Go" list." :-)

Legoguy · Post by **Legoguy** » June 28th, 2003, 9:13 pm

heh...well I never read the entire thread, I know I should have but I was just too tipped off that I went right to posting...sorry bout that...
Consider the agrument as being over (again) please?

jeanjean · Post by **jeanjean** » June 29th, 2003, 3:33 am

Legoguy wrote:
# support of png in ie is useless since it's doesn't support transparencies.. so the argument that says: moz did it once for png so wait another ten years to see ie support mng too is kind of weird

At my website I've implemented a workaround that makes Transparent PNG's supported in IE, via a filter that MS provided in DX. This must be done individually for sites though. And an ActiveX plugin for mng adds full support for transparent MNGs.

i'm really aware of that workaround since i use the same trick

but this is a trick that just completely goes against css spirit

<a href = "http://212.233.10.100/ouff/assets/perso/pokdb/index.asp">look here</a> and <a href = "http://212.233.10.100/ouff/assets/perso/pokdb2/index.asp">here</a> for the ie trick

it just doubles up the amount of tags just to render something.. that is definitely not a solution

ie can't handle png alpha..

even 8bits png render differently

regarding transparencies, seamonkey got paradoxal approach too... the filter attribute is not yet adopted by w3c and ie uses the filter attribute when moz uses -moz-opacity..

that is not usable to me and doesn't make sense to write twice more code.. even more frustrating when you do everything in order to validate your code... i would use flash then to achieve such effect (irony)

Legoguy wrote:
# that well-known mng file is quite big and most of png files i see on the web too.. designers use it (and i use it too because of the lossless compression) and that's great but they don't seem to optimize their pictures.. what's woth then?

The fact that even though they aren't compressed they are nearly a quarter of the size of a BMP makes it worth everything. And MNG with Animation, that's like replacing Gif forever. Gif is absolutley nothing compared to the capabilities of MNG, which even supports dynamic content, complex image and sprites, embedding movies into the file, etc. MNG is nearly guaranteed to take over Gif eventually. Mozilla had the right idea of adopting it but they must've been drunk when they decided to remove it.

yes png is smaller than bmp but it is not smaller than jpg..

what do i use then? jpg .. especially for smaller images.. and small images are what is used for web graphics (not talking about photo that i would only give in png of course)

now regarding free format aspect, it seems like gif could be free by the end of the year. i found <a href ="http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/20/0216233.shtml?tid=152&tid=155&tid=185&tid=99">this</a> the other day.. (but this is /. he ; ) )

i took a look at your <a href = "http://legographics.idwt.net/sample.mng">sample.mng</a> file and it weights 35 ko.. 35 ko for animated smilie.. isn't that too much?

this <a href = "http://212.233.10.100/ouff/assets/perso/matrix_emoticon_II.gif">one</a> gif shows much more and weight much less as well.. (c) deviant Art

mng has a lot to of nice features i agree but in the end that file size problem is a serious matter don't you think?

<b>edit:

i was pm and shown that the same gif i brought up there as an example could be much more ligther so i have to (and i'm glad to) admit that mng is better than gif on this matter then : )

here is the image link: <a href = "http://pmt.sourceforge.net/jeanjean/">here</a>

thanks to GlennRP</b>

wheerdam · Post by **wheerdam** » June 29th, 2003, 7:25 am

jeanjean wrote:yes png is smaller than bmp but it is not smaller than jpg..

what do i use then? jpg .. especially for smaller images.. and small images are what is used for web graphics (not talking about photo that i would only give in png of course)

Errr... I think PNG is a lossless format... and will be horrendeously big for photos. I always use JPEG for photo and PNG/GIF for web graphics (because they're lossless).

My rule for graphics in web is:
JPEG: Photos, AA-ed images
PNG/GIF: Web graphics, sharp bullets, transparancy.

jeanjean · Post by **jeanjean** » June 29th, 2003, 7:57 am

nah i definitely don't want photographies to degrade so i never use jpeg for it even w/ maximum quality settings

i also use png for layouts, demo, etc..

small pictures: jpg and gif (using the smallest and most appropriate one that's it)

edit : i didn't make myself clear enough, yes png are bigger but when i use them it means that i don't want in NO WAY to loose quality even a little bit

of course i don't use png for web gallery ; )

but as a stock format

Legoguy · Post by **Legoguy** » June 29th, 2003, 12:27 pm

For my website's animation at the top the only way to acheive that kind of effect is Flash, same goes for the navigation bar. The entire rest of the site uses either gif (i think only the header background uses it) and the rest are JPG soon to be changed to PNG.