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):
"Gravatar.com has been redesigned to use JPEG images only. There are
certain (still in widespread use) web browsers which do not support PNG
files (which would allow for transparent backgrounds.) I would suggest
Adding a background color to your image, and re uploading it."
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.
What do you think should be done? Should PNG files be supported by Gravatar? Please leave a comment below -- or continue this discussion on your site... this is an important issue for Web Standards.
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