Browsers that support PNG

Anon

I am wondering, is there a list of browsers that support PNG? Im writing a simple graphics library, and I want to output to the best possible format for the target browser, in this order:
PNG, GIF, JPEG (I am using a version of GD that has GIF support).

The issue is, however, is that only newer browsers have built in PNG support. I ONLY want to send PNG images if they have the support for them, and I want this testing to happen server side. Now, sure it will be easy to code for IE and Netscape (just determine the browser version and match against a list), but I want to support other browsers (the most common, anyhow). I noticed PNG was NOT listed in browscap.ini, hence my problem. Any suggestions / links would be appreciated.

[deleted]

The best format for images is not simply PNG or GIF or JPG, it's the format that gives the best image quality with the smallest file size.
It depends on what is in the image. If you have a plain white square, GIF or PNG will probably give the smallest file, but if you have a picture of a flowergarden, JPG will give the smallest file with the highest image quality.

PNG is not allways smaller than GIF either, you'll have to experiment.
Also, check the stats on which browsers are used, and how often.
I't sgood that you want to be compatible with all browsers, But you may find that you are spending a lot of effort to be compatibly with a handfull of users.

knickerlas

Here's the list
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html

You might want to try using standard gif's with links to 'download' the png' file if your users wish to use it.
I don't know the purpose of your site so it's difficult to suggest a course, but you'll find the list at the above URL

Nick

Anon

Thanks... For the time being im just generating chats for use with polls, though I plan to expand to other things in the future. Each chart (single line barchart) is roughtly 120bytes as PNG, 240 as GIF, and 3K as JPEG w/ barely noticable quality reduction.

For doing charts, it really doesnt matter which format I use, I just want to use the most compact format that the user can take, and that the server supports (since I might be moving this to a non-GIF/GD server).