Re: "Valid HTML 4" image

On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 04:28:55AM -0400, Steve Kimberley wrote:
> pdf@bizfon.com wrote:
> > 
> > It kills me that this problem has been around for months, tons of
> > people have complained about it, and NO ONE IS WILLING TO FIX IT!!!

> But I HAVE fixed it (AFAICT)! I sent a copy attached to my
> E-mail. If you haven't got that one, you can pick it up from:
> http://www.path.cam.ac.uk/pics/vh40.gif
> 
> I don't know if you're part of W3C or if you have the access to
> update the image on the W3C site but please, whoever is
> responsible for this, help yourselves! If you like, I'll do the
> rest of them - just tell me where to find them. I'm happy to
> contribute (within reason)!

Thanks, but there is nothing wrong with the HTML 4.0 images; the
problem is buggy support for the PNG image format in current
browsers. (specifically, lack of alpha channel support)

I made a quick page to show what's going on:

    http://www.w3.org/2000/09/vsimg/transparency-test.html

and you will note that the valid-html40.gif image is fine.
(it is with Netscape 4.75 on Linux, anyway; let me know if
it isn't with your browser, but I think it should be.)

Here is a screenshot of Netscape 4.75 on Linux rendering that page:

    http://www.w3.org/2000/09/vsimg/linux-netscape-475.png

and here is one of Galeon 0.7.5 (based on Mozilla M17):

    http://www.w3.org/2000/09/vsimg/linux-galeon-075.png

which renders most of the popular ones with correct transparency.

I'm still lacking transparent (or alpha-channel-happy or whatever)
versions of these:

    http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401.gif
    http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html401.png
    http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10.gif
    http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xml10.gif

and I'm not much of a graphics guy myself (it's been years since
I made a GIF transparent, and I don't think I've done anything
with alpha channels before), so contributions are welcome. (some
of these might have been sent already; I'll check for them when
I get a chance.)

I updated the validator results page just now to link to each of
the PNG and GIF versions of the images instead of only the
generic content-negotiated resource, to make things a bit more
clear to users.

If you want to use these images on pages with non-white backgrounds,
I suggest linking directly to the GIF versions until browsers get
better PNG support. (hmm... only two days until the 4th anniversary
of the PNG recommendation.)

I also moved the images to a new location on our main www.w3.org
servers, so users will have the benefit of our worldwide mirror
system. (www.w3.org is rotated among different servers in the
world depending where you are.)

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny       <gerald@w3.org>  +1 613 261 6630
System Administrator   http://www.w3.org/People/Gerald/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)      http://www.w3.org/

Received on Friday, 29 September 2000 06:02:44 UTC