[Bug 18574] restore support for MNG and JNG

Discussion of bugs in Seamonkey
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kyber
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Re: Way to encourage MNG usage.

Post by kyber »

kyber wrote:Update on this one. I've been using object tag a great deal for uses like this, or for serving content of an arbitrary type from a database. Recently, after losing a lawsuit, Microsoft introduced a click to activate any ActiveX - due to their idiotic <object> implementation, this is *all* <object> tags. Additionally, this click prompt apparently breaks the loading of objects in IE - whether they are an image, or a movie or text.
Don't know if the folks here care that much, but it does put a crimp in using it as a failover. I personally went ahead and added a little IE detection code. I think folks using IE need to get used to the web looking a little more primitive and having fewer features (not saying breaking any functionality mind you). ;)


And an update on *that*
After experimenting with various javascript that was supposed to avoid the click, I was able to eliminate the click, but the objects were still broken (they would load, but not render).
arielb
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mng request in flock

Post by arielb »

I've made this request for the Flock browser which is based on firefox
http://www.flock.com/forums/suggestions ... want-these

hopefully they will take the patch-it will give them another feature above the competition
Then we will see if firefox follows suit
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

Just wanted to add my thoughts on this issue.

Does the web need a 24bit animated bitmap format to replace GIF? Absolutely!

What would I use it for? Animated smilies probably. :) That's actually how I ended up finding this topic, a friend has asked me to make a couple for him & I wondered if there was any kind of animated PNG format, so did a bit of searching & then thought to check on here.

The size issue: I realise that some people are using Linux on platforms that have limited memory &/or storage space, which is fine. Also, some linux users like to squeeze their total install size down to the smallest possible as some sort of intellectual contest, & that's fine also. I can also understand people not wanting Mozilla/Firefox to become bloatware, but until the Mozilla devs manage to fix the problem that causes Firefox to use several hundred MB after a few hours of continuous use, I hardly think worrying about a few hundred KB is really worth it!

Promotion of MNG: I think the easiest way to generate interest would be to first create some sort of plugin/patch that would enable use of .mng files in the exact same way .gif files are used now, via the img tag. Then, make sure that the 2 most popular [at least AFAIK] forum softwares [phpBB & vBulletin] can support it via their image tags & then get people to create 24bit versions of animated smilies. Also, adding support for it in Thunderbird so that they could be used in emails would help as well.

As for software to create MNG files - I just checked, & Animation Shop [comes with PaintShop Pro - at least with versions 7, 8, & 9, not sure about more recent versions] supports it, & there must be plenty of people out there who have it as PSP's quite popular. Someone else mentioned some way of doing animated images via the GIMP - if that still exists then that would be great too, as it would mean a free alternative to people who haven't bought PSP.
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Alien42 wrote:...until the Mozilla devs manage to fix the problem that causes Firefox to use several hundred MB after a few hours of continuous use...

It won't be fixed until someone describes how to see the problem so we can write a bug report. I find that Firefox tends to use less memory than other browsers, and can't reproduce the problem you describe no matter how hard I try. Are there any hints you can give us?

But actually the reason why Mozilla developers decided to drop support for MNG was to save on download size, not RAM usage. Personally, I think people are overly concerned with download size and startup time, for the simple fact that you download the full browser only once, and you start the browser only once a day. A few extra minutes downloading or a few extra seconds starting the browser really doesn't make much practical difference.
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

schapel wrote:It won't be fixed until someone describes how to see the problem so we can write a bug report.

Fair point.

schapel wrote:I find that Firefox tends to use less memory than other browsers, and can't reproduce the problem you describe no matter how hard I try.

That hasn't been my experience. I use 2 browsers on my system, Maxthon & Firefox 1.5.0.8 [I tried 2.0, but when I installed it, 1 of my extensions that I use a lot was disabled by Firefox because it apparently wasn't compatible, despite the plugin's info page saying it was :(]. At the moment Firefox has been running since some time last night [my machine is on 24/7] & I currently have 43 tabs open, & according to Task Manager it's using 250+MB! I realise that it's possible some people might conclude that the memory useage is due to the number of tabs I have open, so I compared it to Maxthon.

As well as Favourites, Maxthon also has something called groups, where you can save a number of open tabs as 1 group so you can open them all together at a later point. I only had maybe 10-15 tabs open in Maxthon at the time, so obviously that wasn't a fair comparison. I closed all but 1 tab, then opened the largest group I had saved. After allowing all the tabs to load Maxthon now has 84 tabs open, but is only using about 23MB! Part of that is because Maxthon has some sort of feature to free up memory regularly. At its peak, whilst loading all those tabs it only went up to about 160MB, but even that's a pretty big difference compared to Firefox.

schapel wrote:Are there any hints you can give us?

I just tried starting up Firefox in safemode [I tend to type up forum posts in a seperate text editor, then just paste when I'm done], just the 1 tab open [basic html page on my HDD with some links], & according to Task Manager it's still using more memory than Maxthon [24,888K for Ff, vs 22,316K for Maxthon which still has 84 tabs open!]. 1 of the links on my start page is Wikipedia, so I went there & then just browsed at random. According to the dropdown list on the back button, I've browsed 15 pages after the Wikipedia home page, & Task Manager now reports memory at 39,512K.
Another 15 links/pages later = 47,272K
15 more = 65,612K

That's just with 1 tab open, & in Safe Mode. You can see how it can build up fairly quickly over a few hours normal usage.

schapel wrote:But actually the reason why Mozilla developers decided to drop support for MNG was to save on download size, not RAM usage. Personally, I think people are overly concerned with download size and startup time, for the simple fact that you download the full browser only once, and you start the browser only once a day. A few extra minutes downloading or a few extra seconds starting the browser really doesn't make much practical difference.

That just... boggles the mind. I can't believe they actually worry about their download being a few hundred KB bigger. I could maybe understand if they were worried about bandwidth bills, if it weren't for the existence of bit-torrent.
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Alien42 wrote:
schapel wrote:It won't be fixed until someone describes how to see the problem so we can write a bug report.

Fair point.

schapel wrote:I find that Firefox tends to use less memory than other browsers, and can't reproduce the problem you describe no matter how hard I try.

That hasn't been my experience...

You should start a new thread about the matter. Some quick points: Are you comparing Mem Usage? If so, you should compare VM Size instead. Also, when you compare memory usage in different browsers, you should do exactly the same thing in both browsers from the moment you start them. Lastly, if you want us to be able to reproduce your results, you need to describe with specific details the things you're doing, right down to the exact URLs you're opening.
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Raccoon
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Post by Raccoon »

Last chance to scare Microsoft into supporting MNG/JNG natively in Vista. If only there was a competative browser out there to give them a reason...

MS has already invested millions into besting us-- so let us inject some Good into their code.
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

Errr... You do know Vista has already gone gold, right? It's been finished for a few weeks now, & has already been released to manufacturers. The reason it hasn't been released to the public yet is because it takes a while to print umpteen million disks.

AFAIK, the only browser with MNG support built in is 1 of the Linux ones [Konquerer I think, though not sure].

As for Vista, after reading this, I'm certainly not in any hurry to "upgrade" to it.
Old GlennRP
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Bug 18574 has been WONTFIXED

Post by Old GlennRP »

Bug # 18574 has been WONTFIXED. Lots of discussion is going on in the now-dead bug that should
probably be here. APNG development is going full steam ahead.
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

GlennRP wrote:Bug # 18574 has been WONTFIXED. Lots of discussion is going on in the now-dead bug that should
probably be here. APNG development is going full steam ahead.
TBH, I don't really care which 1 we get, as long as we get some kind of animated PNG-ish support.
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BenoitRen
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Post by BenoitRen »

APNG? Why are they trying to make yet another animated image format?
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

Because at the moment all we have [in general useage] is GIF, which can only do 256 colours. Would I have preferred MNG? [as I already have software that can handle/make them] Sure, but at the end of the day what's important is we get an image format that is animated & has the same number of colours available as other image formats that have been around for years now.
Old GlennRP
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mPNG

Post by Old GlennRP »

The PNG Development Group is evaluating the APNG proposal, and has come up with a simpler solution, namely putting all of the frame images in the main image and using an mPNG chunk to give the decoder instructions on how to segment the image and display the tiles as animation frames. This solution avoids many of the issues with APNG, but it isn't streamable. Stay tuned.
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Alien42
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Post by Alien42 »

GlennRP wrote:This solution avoids many of the issues with APNG, but it isn't streamable.
I don't know why it'd need to be streamable, we already have more streamable formats than you can shake a stick at. Besides, it's intended to be for animated images, not video, right?
Old GlennRP
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Post by Old GlennRP »

Right. I don't personally consider the lack of streamability a big problem. It's just something to be aware of, that mPNG can't be used for an endless stream of frames, while APNG and MNG could.
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