It appears the good folks at Mozilla are trying to gain a bit of momentum for the Animated PNG file adaptation. Since it is currently only supported by 2 Browsers; Firefox 3, and Opera 9.5 (both in Beta), I wouldn’t get too excited about seeing them sprout like warts on every web page as a replacement to the very antiquated animated GIF files still being used. Oh, and just for the record, it doesn’t matter how you pronounce it. Period. The end. That’s final. End of story.
This is something that is long over due, just like IE supporting transparent PNG files and passing the ACID 2 test. GIF files are a throwback from when the web was new, and they were the best we could offer. But like so many AMC Gremlins, they too should find themselves on the scrap heap. Unfortunately I think this will be adopted at the same rate that the HTML 5 specification will be finished and implemented, and that’s only if the team doesn’t pull it out of the spec before then.
There are some examples out there if you are so inclined to take a peak, pretty good ones too. I took a peak using Opera since the last time I installed Firefox 3 it screwed up a lot of stuff with my reliable Firefox install. So blip on over to animatedpng.com, and take a look at the samples, download the assembler and enjoy the bleeding edge of the web – all the while reveling in the fact that you are creating images that people will not likely see in their entirety.
Luckily, like most things on the web there is a fall-back option built-in and most browsers will show you the first frame as the image, rather than the handy little red x. Check out the Gran Paradiso page too while you’re at it, there’s some fun stuff on it.
Credits:
The SpinFox Firefox logo was created by Justin Dolske.