Date Archive

IE6 .PNG Transparency Hacks

The .PNG (Portable Network Graphics, PNGs not GIFs) has been around for years. Over a decade actually. Mid 1990’s (95-96) discussions arose revolving around the replacement for the popular .GIF format for various reasons: the 256 colour limit, the Unisys and LZW patent enforcement, among others. As of 2004 .PNG has been recognized as an International Standard (ISO/IEC 15948:2003).

With the web2.0 boom and exponential increase in popularity with xhtml/css in 2006/2006 the .PNG has also been embraced by the web development community. The shortcoming. however: IE6. IE6’s final release was in the summer of 2001, years before .PNG was adopted as a standard, thus IE6 does not support 24bit. As of January 2009 an astonishing 18.5% of Internet surfers are still browsing with 8 year old IE6, which handcuff’s many web developers who are not allowed to drop support for such a percentage (still 1/5th of the market). The Solution: IE6 .PNG transparency hacks.