To save me repetition (and time), I'm pasting an excerpt from a debate elsewhere on the forums. Consequently, although the issue is addressed, the reader is advised to please take into account the context with which it was written.

... a particular clause in Drupal's handbook submission policy, which quite frankly, I think is retarded. As a result of that clause, a submission I wrote that deals with a fairly common issue with certain site-types, remains on the forums, and here's why...

Pictures speak a 1000 words. To do a proper job in communicating with total novices, I wanted to do a few supporting screenshots. What do the submission guidelines say?... I must use PNG's!

... WTF?!

IIRC, even movies should be in Quicktime format!

This whole debate has been about making things less awkward for the user and here we are stipulating that contributors have to use formats that only a minority of the web population is able to view!

And please, I'm not inviting a war on what browser, O/S, media player or picture format is best - I know the relative differences of each, the point rests with those words: minority, and awkward.

---

SEPECK suggested I raise this here (I presume) with a view to revisiting it.

In short, please consider allowing both GIF and JPG files... there ya go, I said it! ;p

Comments

Gary Feldman’s picture

Gary Feldman commented

I'm sorry, I must be missing something. Which browsers don't understand .PNG? IE6, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 8.2 all do. I know those aren't the only browsers, but PNG has been around long enough that I can't imagine why other browsers wouldn't be able to support it by now.

Or does the IE6 case depending upon a particular version of Windows?

Gary

greggles’s picture

greggles
he/him
Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented

IE6 doesn't fully support PNG (e.g. transparency)

See http://www.metaskills.net/meta-theme-for-drupal/png-support-for-ie6

pnm’s picture

pnm commented
Category: bug » feature

Does this belong in Documentation?

karldied’s picture

karldied commented

Thanks for bringing comments in from the forums to the mail list. The current doc (at http://drupal.org/node/762) says:

Format: PNG-8
PNG is preferred because of its lossless compression and small file size. JPEG is not suitable - it leaves artifacts and its 24-bit color depth is unneccesary when dealing with screenshots. GIF is not used because it is an outdated format.

So, right now, this says that PNG-8 is the _preferred_ format. I propose a re-write that more clearly states that the others are fine:

Format: PNG-8
PNG is preferred because of its lossless compression and small file size. JPEG and GIF formats can also be used. If using JPEG, select the compression carefully to keep the files size small, but not create excessive artifacts. GIF is outdated, but can be used if PNG is not readily available.

I also think that the word 'images' belongs in the title, since that is the broader term a user may be looking for in the handbook (and as evidenced by the title of this issue report).

mtopping’s picture

mtopping commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Webchick added image upload support for documentation contributors.