Comments on: Opera Skins will support animated GIF images

By: oyun

oyun — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:11:59 +0000

Ctrl-Tab or Right-Click-&-MouseWheel is that new/refreshed pages do not show in blue text (as opposed to black text) as they should. This is a long-standing bug with the native skin. If someone can explain how to repair that aspect, I would appreciate it. exactly . very good works

By: Øyvind Ø

Øyvind Ø — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:45:48 +0000

The overhead people see with PNG files are usually PNGs whit metadata stored in the final image. There is no reason for storing it in the final product like for a theme for Opera.

Without the metadata PNG files should be smaller than GIF file, thought there will always be occasions a GIF can be smaller.

PNG files are quite a bit more complex than GIF files, adding poor output support (even from some versions of Adobe Photoshop) adds to the confusion about PNGs real potential.

MNG as was mentioned is a lot more complex, and does not even have the same file signatur, making it far from compatible with most PNG decoders. At lest APNG has a fallback for single image display for decoders that doesn’t support APNG. But then again, how many of you have ever heard about APNG. Maybe SVG could give us what we want. Though not heavily supported out there yet, it is at least getting somewhere. And vector graphics looks so much nicer after all. Doesn’t it!?!

By: Kelson

Kelson — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:50:57 +0000

In many cases, especially when dealing with small images, gif has a size advantage over PNG.

Yeah, but in my experience, they have to be really small (~16×16 pixels, sizes under 1KB) to get to that point. I’ve been using 8-bit indexed PNGs with binary transparency — equivalent to GIF in capabilities, so IE6 can handle it without hacks — on my sites for several years, and it’s only when the dimensions get down to emoticon size that I start seeing GIF compress better than PNG.

I keep meaning to look up the format description and see if the PNG header is bigger. It could just be overhead.

By: Jeff Bailey

Jeff Bailey — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:32:16 +0000

I’m more retro than GT500. I still use Rijk van Geijtenbeek’s Opera 5 skin. Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated since v7, but I’m probably not missing too much. Animated gif’s won’t add any thrill to my browsing experience.

By: Anastasia

Anastasia — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:05:14 +0000

I use gif for transparancy and animation, and pngs for everything else. Wikipedia is trying to get people to use SVG, but until IrfanView supports it I will not.

By: minghong

minghong — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:51:36 +0000

In many cases, especially when dealing with small images, gif has a size advantage over PNG. So you can’t claim PNG has the definite advantage.

Are you sure? Even if you save the PNG in 256-color, and optimized with tools like pngcrush and PNGOUT?

By: Xenofur

Xenofur — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:40:32 +0000

In many cases, especially when dealing with small images, gif has a size advantage over PNG. So you can’t claim PNG has the definite advantage.

By: J. King

J. King — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:19:49 +0000

I use gif for transparancy and animation, and pngs for everything else.

Why not use PNGs for transparency also? PNG has every advantage over GIF unless you need animation… And even animation may no longer be a limitation in due time.

By: minghong

minghong — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 02:44:35 +0000

I myself don’t use any skins, I like the native look and feel of Windows

Well, the default theme in Opera doesn’t look and feel like Windows… e.g. the blue tabs don’t look native neither in Classic nor Luna.

By: Saito

Saito — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:37:39 +0000

Mathias wrote

Too bad there is no such skin for GTK based environments …

Searched for Gnome?
http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/?search=gnome&x=0&y=0

I use modified Zeus skin both on Win and even on KDE

By: Øyvind Ø

Øyvind Ø — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:27:16 +0000

Isn’t that a bit odd not to mention in the changelog. Well at least a nice feature to add, though I hope Skin designers won’t go crazy with animations.

By: Mathias Brodala

Mathias Brodala — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:49:24 +0000

I myself don’t use any skins, I like the native look and feel of Windows, but apparently I’m in a small minority.

I can fully understand. If I’m using Opera on Windows, I always use the native skin. Too bad there is no such skin for GTK based environments …

By: treego

treego — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:12:15 +0000

The problem with the native skin is that when cycling pages with Ctrl-Tab or Right-Click-&-MouseWheel is that new/refreshed pages do not show in blue text (as opposed to black text) as they should. This is a long-standing bug with the native skin. If someone can explain how to repair that aspect, I would appreciate it. There is a Tweaked Native skin here that addresses this particular issue, but the Tweaked Native skin has some major display issues on the Speed Dial page.

By: James Cassell

James Cassell — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:59:47 +0000

I personally like the Windows Native skin except for when I’m on a computer that has the Windows Classic skin (any version of Windows older than XP); then native looks ugly. With Vista and XP the native skin looks great, IMHO.

By: Kc4

Kc4 — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:39:40 +0000

I use gif for transparancy and animation, and pngs for everything else. Wikipedia is trying to get people to use SVG, but until IrfanView supports it I will not.