On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 05:01 PM, Brad Pettit wrote:
> There is a difference, to, in how the images are referenced. OBJECT or
> EMBED might get mapped to a plug-in, depending on file helper settings.
> IMG tags are always handled by the browser. This was more a legacy
> behavior than an ideal one. When an image file is accessed directly,
> file helpers win.
The problem we're talking about has no involvement with HTML tags
whatsoever. IE 5.1.2's inline PNG display is perfect (thank goodness for
that). The problem we're talking about arises when loading a PNG
*directly*. For example, let's consider the following fictional URL:
http://domain.com/my_image.png
When a stock install of OS X 10.1/IE 5.1.2 encounters such a URL, it
doesn't display the image. It does this instead:
"Internet Explorer doesn't know how to handle the type of file you
have selected."
Obviously, this is incorrect behavior. PNGs need to have exactly the
same status in IE as JPEGs and GIFs. There's no reason for it to be any
other way. You guys have the best PNG support in the industry. The fact
that IE can't deal with a PNG file being loaded directly is a source of
frustration among site authors and end users.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2001, at 04:48 PM, Brad Pettit wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is what you're seeing, but Quicktime had a habit
> of hijacking the PNG type, overriding IE's built-in support with its
> inferior support. The best thing to do is turn it off in the Quicktime
> preferences, and "fix" the helper in IE to view PNG with the browser.
I'm aware of the issue of QuickTime hijacking PNG. Wow, was that
annoying. PNG support without transparency -- great.
But I think this is a different (though still long-standing) problem. I
tried switching PNG support off in System Preferences -> QuickTime, but
it had no effect. Though I doubt this matters because IE's file helpers
panel does not indicate that QuickTime is responsible for dealing with
either image/png or image/x-png.
IE 5.1.2's file helpers look like this:
.jhf - image/jpeg :: Handling - "View with Browser"
.jpe - image/jpeg :: Handling - "View with Browser"
.jpeg - image/jpeg :: Handling - "View with Browser"
.jpg - image/jpeg :: Handling - "View with Browser"
.gif - image/gif :: Handling - "View with Browser"
.png - image/png :: Handling - "Save to File"
.png - image/x-png :: Handling - "Save to File"
See the problem? :)
So, two questions:
[1] Why is IE claiming it doesn't know how to handle image/png when this
is explicitly set in file helpers?
[2] Why does file helpers say the file should be saved to disk instead
of being displayed in the browser?
Also, if I attempt to change the handling for PNG in file helpers, the
settings are not preserved. They have reverted to the defaults each time
I open the file helpers panel.
Just for the sake of argument, let's say this is QuickTime's fault. I
imagine you guys have better access to the QuickTime/OS X folks than we
do. Somebody from your group should shoot them an email and say "Hey,
QuickTime is breaking IE's PNG support and driving our mutual users
nuts. Here's what you have to fix..."
Here's a post by Jimmy on the topic of the QuickTime hijacking issue --
from six months ago:
-----------------------
From: "Jimmy Grewal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri Apr 06, 2001 04:35:05 AM US/Pacific
To: "Mac Internet Explorer Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: IE 5.1b1 PNG Support
Reply-To: "Mac Internet Explorer Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
No, this is because QuickTime slams all the file helper settings to map
all the file types it handles to itself. Contrary to popular belief, QT
does not do the best job in handling some of the file types it supports.
An example of that is PNG. The PNG parser in MacIE is probably one of
the best ones shipping in any browser and is quite a bit better than the
one that ships with QT (plug-ins don't support transparency).
I have mentioned this to the QT folks several times, but I think I'm
going to have to bring it up again next week when I'm in Cupertino.
For an example of how cool the PNG support is in MacIE, check out:
http://www.panic.com/audion/faces.php
The way to fix all these problems is to set your file helper settings in
IE to "View with Browser" in the bottom pop-up. Unfortunately, it's
difficult to make changes to File Helper settings in the IE 5.1 under OS
X...this should be fixed in the next public release of IE for OS X.
-Jimmy
-----------------------
Perhaps the issue with QuickTime swallowing PNGs was fixed. But if it
was fixed, there is another issue. The most frustrating thing about all
of this is that IE can display PNGs -- it just seems like a simple
misconfiguration, but its impact is large.
Best Regards,
- Scott
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