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APNG is dumb

I saw it, but it's not really relevant. The reason the APNG looks better there is because the image requires variable transparency, which is unsupported by GIF. But we're dealing with sprites that only need the most basic sort of transparency, and as such, GIF is fine for them. The size issue is debatable, but I've seen examples showing just the opposite, and it's mostly a matter of how well you compress your files. Even if we accept those numbers at face value, a 10% difference in file size is surely a small price to pay for universal support.
 
Transparent GIF sucks when resized. End of story.

Honestly, APNG is a very good format, but needs more support.
 
Bikini Miltank said:
I saw it, but it's not really relevant. The reason the APNG looks better there is because the image requires variable transparency, which is unsupported by GIF. But we're dealing with sprites that only need the most basic sort of transparency, and as such, GIF is fine for them. The size issue is debatable, but I've seen examples showing just the opposite, and it's mostly a matter of how well you compress your files. Even if we accept those numbers at face value, a 10% difference in file size is surely a small price to pay for universal support.
Click to expand...

Agreed here; I'm also of the mindset that APNG is a superior filetype, but the fact of the matter is that even other standards-compliant browsers do not support APNG at the moment. We can do our part to help APNG along, but disabling functionality - animated sprites - for a major selection of our users, just is not worth it.
If this was something that wasn't supported in IE but worked everywhere else, I'd be fully in favor of it. If we were a smaller, more personal site, I'd be fully in favor of it. But it's something that even users who have switched off of IE to better browsers may not be able to experience, and that's not the right way to go about things. It's poor business.
 
The truth is that APNG will probably never be universally supported. It was rejected by the PNG group, and was conceived merely as a means of animating elements of Firefox's interface. This isn't some issue where Microsoft are ignoring standards: there is no official standard for APNG. We might as well be using <marquee>.
 
You guys forget, Opera can see APNG too.

And if we waited for everything to be standards-compliant to adopt it, everything would just fall by the wayside. We kind of are the first major Pokémon wiki, you know. If we had waited for every other Pokémon website to do the wiki thing first, we'd still have no Pokédex. Hell. If we waited for everyone else to do it first, we'd have no information not copied from elsewhere.

You aren't missing anything by not having APNG enabled. Sprite animations aren't something integral to the wiki. They're just extra little things. yes, even in the sprite chart, which for 90% of the DP sprites, has no animation.
 
I download Chrome for a premium web browsing experience.
Now I get incompatibility issues?
This is unfair!

(Sorry if I sound like a douchey-asshole.)
 
Just throwing in a side-note to this debate, bandwidth isn't an issue for us. Load (connections per second) is what drives slowness.
 
Um... GIF vs APNG, huh? What's the use of APNG when most browsers can't display the animation(s) of it? In that case, it depends on whether the browser downloads only the static frame or the whole file. If it's the latter, eating up users' bandwidth isn't exactly the smartest move.

Yes, I am aware there *might* be some colour info loss when using GIFs as opposed to APNG. However, I think GIFs are a perfect fit for sprites - they are still using 16-colour sprites these days! As for move images, well... it all depends on the image in question. If it's ingame, and not Gen IV/V, GIFs should suffice. If it's Gen IV/V, APNG might work better, but there's nothing stopping an optimised GIF animation from working well. Anime move images, err... I think it all depends on what's best. I KNOW there are some images where APNG is not a valid option, like the HM-move demonstration GIF. If it were an APNG, there's no such thing as an informational static frame for non-supported browsers in that case.

I sometimes use Bulbapedia with Chrome, and guess what? I see APNG failure - that is, no animations. (By the way, what's the current marketshare of browsers?)

Sprites animations, while not necessary, enhance what I call "The Bulbapedia Experience". And I noticed that just about every sprite there are a perfect fit for GIF. Why not?

If they all implemented these GIF features, might as well as call it a "standard".

I think we should focus on compatibility.

*NOTE: I usually use Firefox for browsing, but I sometimes use Chrome, IE9 and, in extreme cases, Nintendo DSi Browser*
 
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I use Opera, which renders APNGs perfectly.

Plus, it's a good browser, and since obviously no one is going to convert all of these images, I recommend downloading Opera, or any other browser that supports APNG, if you don't like only seeing the first frame (I know it would drive me nuts).

I do wish APNG was compatible with Photoshop, however...

Jarooda said:
Um... GIF vs APNG, huh? What's the use of APNG when most browsers can't display the animation(s) of it?
Click to expand...
APNG is capable of rendering semi-transparent pixels, GIF is not.

That's the only real advantage.
 
Master Mew said:
APNG is capable of rendering semi-transparent pixels, GIF is not.

That's the only real advantage.
Click to expand...

Well. There's something I didn't know.

And the sprites don't usually deal in semi-transparencies anyway, right?
 
Zekurom said:
Well. There's something I didn't know.

And the sprites don't usually deal in semi-transparencies anyway, right?
Click to expand...
I believe they do, actually, mostly around the edges; it helps them blend in better with the page background.

This is why PNGs with transparent backgrounds usually blend better on any color background than their GIF equivalents.
 
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