Name | Color Depth | Transparency | Stuff | |
GIF | <256 colors or less | single level transparency built in animation well established in browsers/editors |
proprietary limited to 256 colors |
Ideal for icons, the gif is not area compressed so text still has crisp edges, the 256 color limit hinders photos, but is useful for limiting page bandwidth/download time. Built in animation capabilities but is not any more useful than any other graphic for creating more advances user interfaces (say like changing graphic on mouse click) |
JPG | <24 million colors | no transparency well established in browsers/editors |
no transparency animation only by java or other code |
|
PNG | <24 million colors | multi-level transparency (alpha channel) | not well established in browsers | Potential to take the place of both jpg and gif for 2D graphics |
VRML | 24 million colors | multi-level transparency (effectiveness depends on users hardware/software (since it's a rendered technology) | requires a plugin for 3.0 browsers |
|