On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 10:37 AM, Harry Zink wrote:
> I picked this up from letters to Macintouch, and I can confirm that this
> doesn't work:
>
> -----
> I can't select the QuickTime Plugin in Internet Explorer when a window
> complaining about an unidentified file type comes up and gives me the
> option
> of saving to disk, finding a plugin, etc. It does not show up as a
> viable
> option, even though it is there. Also, it does not check for available
> plugins in both system and user libraries. Even when manually added to
> preferences to use the QuickTime plugin, PNG graphics cannot be viewed.
This is not a new problem in 5.1.2, and has nothing to do with PNG
support per say. PNG images will display in-line (meaning, embedded in
HTML) in MacIE 5.x and higher. In fact, the MacIE team did fantastic
work on PNG rendering. It is literally the PNG group's poster child for
perfect implementation:
"Mac IE5's rendering is the best since it not only does full
alpha-transparency but also gamma and color correction."
<http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngs-img.html>
The problem only arises when the user attempts to view a PNG image on
its own, meaning not embedded in HTML. For some reason unknown to the
universe, every version of MacIE5 I've ever used has the file helpers
settings for image/png and image/x-png set such that said dialog appears
rather than the image just being displayed.
Under MacIE 5.0.x for OS9, you could at least manually fix the file
helper settings to address this -- as described by members of this list.
This solved the problem on an individual basis, but still meant the vast
majority of MacIE users would not be able to view individual PNGs unless
they were in-line. Under 5.1.2, it's not even possible to fix this
manually (at least on my machine). You can make the changes, but they
don't stick.
I'm sensitive to the fact that large software projects have a
never-ending list of issues to resolve, but I can't imagine why this one
has not been taken care of yet. It has been an issue for at least 1.5
years, and unless I'm missing something obvious, I can't see it taking
more than 60 seconds to fix the default settings for the PNG mime types.
It would noticeably improve the experience for the end user.
Can someone please fix this? It would be much appreciated by web
designers and Mac users everywhere.
And for the record, it's a *good* thing that this user was not able to
associate the QuickTime plug-in with PNG. That I believe that would
likely downgrade their PNG support by removing the ability to utilize
transparency and compositing.
Best Regards,
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
http://wildtofu.com/
http://maxify.com/
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