(no subject)

[wolfwings]

And why is it I'm the only LiveJournal user I've been able to find that actually went to the trouble of making any Alpha-channel images for themselves, instead of just cardboard-cutout ones that still have big-honking-rectangles around them? Just spent like 20 minutes digging far and wide through the wonderful thing known as recursive friends links, and looking through the allpics entries, and I actually couldn't find anyone with alpha-blended images.

Or am I actually one of the few folks that knows how to do that still?

Comments

[kiala.livejournal.com]

I suppose some of us don't need to alpha blend our pictures ;> I just kept the backgrounds on all of mine because they either matched the page well or looked good with the picture anyway..

-Kiala

Yeah, I figured that was the usual answer...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...just, well, I've had to re-do some of the colour choices I'd made for the Friends list to let the chosen images at least look okay. *giggles* I dunno, I guess I just like not having backgrounds on my images, big proponent of better file formats like PNG and the like. Well, that, and I do enough 3D video-game level editing that I appreciate how useful a good alpha-blended image can be. >^.^<

That and...

[talesin.livejournal.com]

That and the fact that on a number of systems (or maybe it's just LJ acting funky) the alpha blending pukes and you get a nasty digitized black box backgrounding it, sprinkled liberally with speckles of white that didn't quite fall into the alpha-range. Like on my own machine..

A.K.A.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Your Browser Does Not Support Alpha-Blended PNG Files.

I'm using Mozilla 0.9.6, recently upgraded to 0.9.8, and they work. Netscrape 6.x works, as does I.E. at some version or another.

So yeah, older versions puke royally, as do any that are using QuickTime, which helpfully takes over ALL rendering of PNG files, even if the browser natively supports it. Joy...

So yeah, I just dug and found out the problems with Alpha-Blending, much of which center on: Older Browsers, and anyone using that monstrosity known as QuickTime. :-P

And I'm sorry, something that forcefully takes over a file format, and offers no way to let the browser handle something it may have better support for is kinda, well, icky.

Re: A.K.A.

[talesin.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I was forced up to AIEE! 6.. maybe it's the QuickTime problem. Though I also wonder why not simply place it into the GIF89 format. Yes, reduced color quality. But you also end up with a wider degree of visability with older styles of browser.

Oh, that's easy.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

I actually got an almighty C&D from UniSys with a previous web page, just for using GIF's. Yeah, I got busted by the GIF-police for using them without paying a royalty. I was too young at the time to know better, so I signed it off, and picked up PNG way too early on. :-)

Heck, I'm figuring out how to do MNG now for alpha-blended animations, instead of just picking up a free GIF tool. For another few years, I can't use GIF's, basically. I'll try to dig up the papers some time if you want next time you're over, hon.

[azzacanth.livejournal.com]

I am not sure what you mean? your icon shows up as a wolf head on a nice brown/beige type background on mine o.O is this not what it is supposed to do?