You've probably heard that GIFs seem to be on their way out and that a new graphics format called PNG (pronounced "ping") is about to take the Web by storm. There are quite a few reasons for this, one of them legal. The technical reasons for PNG's new popularity include, among other things, the compactness of PNG images, the number of colors available using PNG, and the ability to manipulate the transparency of more than one color in more than one way in PNG images.

Older browsers can't display PNG images -- and by "older" I mean browsers as new as Netscape Navigator 3 and MS Internet Explorer 3. To view PNGs you'll need Netscape Communicator PR3 or higher along with a PNG-viewer plug-in, or a newer browser such as Communicator 4.04 or Internet Explorer 4. Go to the W3C PNG page and follow the browser testing link at the end of the page to see if your browser can display inline PNGs.

If you'd like to learn more about PNG, head out to the PNG Home Page and to the other PNG-related sites listed there. And for specific information on PSP and PNG, see Anthony Argyriou's Paint Shop Pro and PNGs.