1015661 - Consider adding MNG support

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 18574

(Core :: Graphics: ImageLib, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Straver]

I know MNG has been part of the Firefox/Mozilla code a long time ago and has been removed. APNG has been implemented as an unofficial alternative and contender, but APNG is a much more limited animated image format than MNG and an unofficial extension to PNG, putting it in a grey area. It also seems to be clear that APNG will never be accepted into the PNG standard.

Now before you slam a WONTFIX on it at the mere mention of something that was dropped from the core before, please hear me out: MNG is supported by quite a few image processing tools, and is a more common output format than APNG (not really supported by anything but CLI conversion tools). Alternatives for animated images on the web are few or convoluted/tricky:
* animated GIF (patent encumbered and very limited (256 paletted, no real transparency))
* Flash (well, I guess we all know about the issues with that, a resource hog, and not open source)
* CSS animations (tricky, limited in what it can animate, and resource intensive)
* Javascript image flipping (doesn't work properly in many setups, and very resource intensive)

Considering many video formats are currently also supported in the core, and an MNG decoder wouldn't add much to it in code size, I think it would be a good addition/enhancement to the browser, and allowing more flexibility for web designers to use truecolor animation with transparency, without having to rely on plugins.

Comment 2

[Mark Straver]

So, any rationale behind the effective WONTFIX (by marking it as dup of a wontfixed bug) here? Things have changed considerably since 1999.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

The reality is that MNG completely failed to achieve adoption outside of Mozilla, which is the core reason it was removed.  You can only achieve things without plugins if multiple browsers are willing to support it.  That didn't happen before, and there's no particularly compelling reason that it'd happen now.  The web has moved on (HTML5 video, canvas, CSS animations, etc), and I don't think there's much likelihood of anyone picking up the charge to make MNG a part of the Web.  I'm sure that if Chrome or others implemented it we'd reconsider, but MNG is basically a dead format these days.

Comment 4

[Mark Straver]

All right, thanks for your time explaining :)
I'll consider it the "BetaMax of the Web" then. Good idea and good standard, but not enough global adoption to make it work.