Firefox adds support for APNG
The Firefox web browser has just added APNG support to its development versions, meaning it will appear in a future release. APNG is an animated version of the popular PNG image format, solving one of PNG’s main shortcomings to the GIF format. APNG was designed to replace MNG, a different animated PNG format that never took off because its design was seen to be unnecessarily complex. The APNG specification hasn’t yet been finalized, but is expected to be once the PNG group approves a minor change.
Firefox is currently the only major web browser to support APNG. However, applications that support regular PNG have no problem loading the first frame of an APNG file, so there’s little risk in using it today with that in mind.
PNG is a World Wide Web Consortium open standard and has good support in all major browsers except Internet Explorer, which has a few noteworthy bugs: Internet Explorer 6 and below don’t support partial transparency; and Internet Explorer 7 and below don’t correctly support gamma correction, meaning that many PNG images will appear somewhat darker or lighter than they should. Nevertheless, PNG has largely replaced GIF on the Web due to its better compression, fuller color depth, and additional features.
Here are some relevant links:
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