If the mountain will not come to Mohammed...

Published by Vlasta on May 3rd 2011.

Long time ago, I have made this web display animated previews of uploaded cursors using the APNG file format. This is an extension of the popular PNG image format that can do animation. It is very easy to create in PHP. And then I waited for Chrome and Internet Explorer to catch up with Firefox and Opera and support APNG. And then I waited some more...

...Mohammed will go to the mountain

Well, I did not really expect Internet Explorer to support APNG any time soon, but I hoped Chrome will be more pro-active with new features. It does not seem that way. Despite having a 2-years old topic on their support forum where hundreds of people asked for APNG support, nothing happened.

And so, I decided to swallow the bitter pill and show animated GIFs in Internet Explorer and Chrome. GIF is an ancient format with many limitations (namely, max. of 256 colors and poor transparency support). Therefore, I did not abandon APNGs - they will still work in Firefox and Opera, but IE and Chrome users browsing the cursor library will see animated GIFs instead of non-animated PNGs (with a white background instead of a transparent one and in some cases with less colors).

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JDDellGuy on May 4th 2011 0

WooHoo! Thanks Vlasta! First thing I noticed when I got on today. Agreed, it's not perfect, but oh well, it's better than nothing.

Anonymous on May 4th 2011 0

Good job. I only wonder why not everybody does that already.

By the way, apng2gif converter can be quite effective.

Amfibia on May 4th 2011 0

I beg to complicate the script: to appear when you hover over another GIF - with a background RGB (224,224,224)

Review case!

Vlasta on May 4th 2011 0

I do not think it is worth the effort. If you do not like the white squares when mouse is hovering above the cursor, just use Firefox or Opera.