Gravatar, please bring back PNG files!

April 10, 2008 by ryan
Gravatar recently made some big changes when migrating the site from Ruby on Rails to PHP. While most of these changes are a real benefit, there is one big feature that has been removed -- PNG files are no longer supported! Initially, I was sure it had to be a fluke -- why would someone want to remove PNG files for something like this? However, upon contacting support, my fears were confirmed (email pasted below):


First off I want to emphasize I really appreciate this service that Gravatar is providing; it has always worked well and come on, it's free! That being said, it is somewhat concerning that the support for PNG files has been dropped for legacy browsers.

While PNG files may not look pretty on IE6, its not an issue that will prevent IE6 (or other legacy browser) users from viewing the site. Moving web standards forward is important! As web developers, I believe its our responsibility to let the end-user know that their overall experience may be better with a newer (standards-compliant) browser. Furthermore, removing the ability to use PNG files for legacy browser support is somewhat harmful! Imagine if iTunes stopped selling MP3s because people on Walkman's couldn't listen to them -- no real technological advancement would be made for fear of alienating some users.

Ultimately, the decision to support PNG files is up to Automattic (the creators of Gravatar). My hope, is that they would allow the Gravatar users to pick the image format of choice while educating their users that PNG files may not show up as expected for some people.

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