Format Support
A format, however, is only as good as the support that it receives. Many software companies have, slowly but surely, incorporated support for the PNG format in their applications. Companies such as Adobe and Macromedia have created applications that allow the designer to export their images as PNGs and many, many more allow users to view PNGs. The roadblock to wide spread acceptance, however, has been the poor support that the major web browsers have shown. It is only now, with the release of Netscape 6, that we finally have full support for PNGs by a major browser. This is a somewhat hollow victory though when you consider the fact that Internet Explorer has the highest share of the browser market and still, even in it's latest incarnation, does not fully support the file format.

What's the big deal? Well, PNGs aren't a big deal if you're the average user surfing the web. Colorful graphics will still appear on your screen no matter what format they are published in as the color differences between them are hardly discernible to the naked eye. PNG will not change the way graphics are viewed. They will, however, change the way that they are created. Designers will find the process of creating graphics for the web much easier and less time consuming than before... especially if they work on very large, graphics-intensive projects.