260411 - MS IE breaks png alpha channel padlock is distracting and horrible looking.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Query/Bug List, defect)

Description

[Jason Pyeron]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: 

see: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/
     http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;294714
     http://www.koivi.com/ie-png-transparency/

the solution does not work for backgrounds. DOH!

made the padlock a GIF.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:



Expected Results:  
transparency...

Comment 1

[Jason Pyeron]

Attachment: GIF padlock

Comment 2

[Jason Pyeron]

Attachment: patch

Comment 3

[Jason Pyeron]

this issue was caused by bug 252810

Comment 4

[Christian Reis]

Comment on attachment 159428 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

I'm okay with this, though working around an MSIE bug sucks.

Comment 5

[Vlad Dascalu]

Clearing approval flag when no review+ flags are available.

Comment 6

[Christian Reis]

Since it went into 2.18 as well...

Comment 7

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Comment on attachment 159428 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

If you're going to deny review, I need to know why.  Care to explain?

Comment 8

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

"IE sux.  Tell them to get Firefox."  ;)

yeehah.

Holding approvals pending finding out what vladd doesn't like about it.

Comment 9

[Vlad Dascalu]

IBM's GIF patent will expire on 11 August 2006 - see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html#venuenote . This might be outdated, by
the way, but I still think GIF is not the way to go.

Proprietary patents should something that must be avoided. We need to take a
step back and look at the bigger picture and at this project's goal: be the best
open source bug tracking system on the market. Open source means MPL, which
implies a bunch of legal stuff.

Been able to "deliver" the code-base is much more important than UI. Having a
nice UI in IE6 and a code that violates a bunch of patents is less preferable
than one that does not violate the patent. Especially since we can have both
(nice UI in IE6 and GIF-free) with a little trouble. The 3rd link posted in
comment 0 gives nice solutions (if it's not available, try its Google cache:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.koivi.com%2Fie-png-transparency%2F&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
)

The GIF patent might be expired by now in all countries, or maybe not (and only
one of those lawyer guys could research all countries and the actual status).
IBM still seems to own the LZW compression algorithm, but even if it doesn't, I
still think moving away from GIF is a very good idea. Of course Dave has the
final word on this :)

Comment 10

[Jason Pyeron]

I have a license from Adobe Systems to use Adobe Photoshop,
this inturn has a license to encode GIF files, which is where I did it.

Here is what I did. open the PNG in MS Photo viewer (adobe reports it as broken)
select all
copy
in photoshop new, paste
wand tol 0, select border, add select inside shackle, delete.

save for web, GIF, transparency


LICENSE valid... no patents infringed.
as to that code in link 3
to much hack to put in BZ

Comment 11

[Vlad Dascalu]

1. This means that developers won't be able to modify the gif file, so
developers won't be able to contribute to our CVS code base.

2. GIFs are derived work of the LZW compression algorithm. Just because they are
nice guys doesn't mean that they won't be able to charge on the derived work in
the future.

Since not everybody can afford an Adobe license, I'd prefer to move away from
the GIF patent piradigm. CCing Gerv for patent-related comments.

Comment 12

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Comment on attachment 159428 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

agreed, overriding the review-.

The patent covers encoding of GIFs, it does not cover transmission of
pre-encoded ones.

Comment 13

[Jason Pyeron]

(In reply to comment #9)
> IBM's GIF patent will expire on 11 August 2006 - see
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html#venuenote . This might be outdated, by
> the way, but I still think GIF is not the way to go.
> Proprietary patents should something that must be avoided. We need to take a
> step back and look at the bigger picture and at this project's goal: be the 
best
> open source bug tracking system on the market. Open source means MPL, which
> implies a bunch of legal stuff.

this has nothing to do with OWNING a gif file.
BZ does not render it on the fly.

(In reply to comment #11)
> 1. This means that developers won't be able to modify the gif file, so
> developers won't be able to contribute to our CVS code base.

yes they can, just get a ligit GIF editor
or viewer and save as other format

> 2. GIFs are derived work of the LZW compression algorithm. Just because they 
are
> nice guys doesn't mean that they won't be able to charge on the derived work 
in
> the future.

Has no relevance, there is a legal contract in place from Adobe Systems.

> Since not everybody can afford an Adobe license, I'd prefer to move away from
> the GIF patent piradigm. CCing Gerv for patent-related comments.

fine then email the png files to [e-mail] and within 2 business days we 
will submit a GIF version.

This is very SILLY.

And us encoding the GIFs was not a joke.

Comment 14

[Vlad Dascalu]

True.

It's not like we don't have already docs/images/*.gif in the CVS repository. But
all the world is moving away from GIF, and it certainly seems that we shouldn't
be doing the opposite. But, if you want a little hack, go ahead and do it.

Someone complained to me that Bugzilla should be rewritten because it's full of
hacks. Since then I tried to avoid that and write clean code. Sure, in a world,
it's not possible to find the perfect solution and you must do compromises. The
problem is that the more often you compromise, the more dirty your codebase
becomes. Moving towards a patent-free image format would go a lot in the right
direction. But there will always be a lynk-like browser for which we will have
to compromise. Sure, in design, that one-liner function will look clean, but in
reality, that one-hundred line code will work, because it deals with real-life
incompatibilities and situations. :)

I'll redraw my review- and let Dave decide :)

Comment 15

[Vlad Dascalu]

Oops, I haven't seen comment #12 :)

Comment 16

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

(In reply to comment #11)
> 1. This means that developers won't be able to modify the gif file, so
> developers won't be able to contribute to our CVS code base.

There are lots of free programs which can open a GIF and save it as something
else, and there's actually legal GIF encoders which are free on some platforms
(GraphicConverter for Mac OS X, for example - it's licensed, and is shareware,
but saving as GIF still works in the unregistered (free) version)

> 2. GIFs are derived work of the LZW compression algorithm. Just because they
> are nice guys doesn't mean that they won't be able to charge on the derived
> work in the future.

The patent covers encoding with LZW.  The patent specifically excludes decoding,
which means anything that views it (i.e. web browser) is safe.  Niether does it
cover storage and transmission of the interim product, so I don't buy this
argument. 

We've had 1x1.gif in the bugzilla directory since the beginning of Bugzilla.

But I'll await Gerv's opinion.

Comment 17

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

err, let's put these back for now, I'm still waiting for Gerv.  But unless he
says something profound I'm probably going to approve it anyway.

Comment 18

[Vlad Dascalu]

> which means anything that views it (i.e. web browser) is safe.

The issue is not decoding but transmission. You can't redistribute the derived
work without the patent owner's approval.

Like I said before, in our case they are "good guys" in this case and decided
not to forbid transmission, so that's irrelevant anyway.

Comment 19

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Someone is going to have to step back and explain to me exactly what this
feature is, because the initial bug report really doesn't explain it very well.

But, on the GIF point, most free software is now acquiring GIF support; general
consensus is that it's OK. See http://burnallgifs.org/ - "GIFs are now patent-free".

IBM's remaining GIF patent (if it would hold up in court; there's doubt about
that) applies to software used to encode GIFs. Therefore there is no problem in
us redistributing a GIF. It is true that someone may need non-free software to
modify it (although see above); while not an ideal situation, I wouldn't say
that it makes the file itself non-free. 

Vlad is fortunately incorrect - GIFs are not a derived work of LZW, just as my
compiled C code is not a derived work of gcc. And the patent does not cover
transmission of GIFs via its algorithm; you can't get a patent on sending a
particular configuration of bits over the Internet.

Gerv

Comment 20

[Jason Pyeron]

in Internet explorer PNG with transparency get all messed up, and look hideous.

to the point they are distracting away from the ID column.

Comment 21

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

OK, how about a way to avoid this whole GIF war...  the article in the third
link suggests that PNG has a binary transparency mode (as opposed to blended
alpha) which IE *does* support.  Can we rebuild the PNG file with a 1-bit alpha
mask rather than 24-bit?

Comment 22

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

(In reply to comment #21)
> Can we rebuild the PNG file with a 1-bit alpha mask rather than 24-bit?

OK, GraphicConverter and Photoshop both claim there is no alpha channel on that
PNG file.  Huh?

Comment 23

[Jason Pyeron]

Attachment: new png IE compatible

oh! I should of looked at the obvious when Adobe did not like it....

silly me, sorry to ruffle so many panties.

Comment 24

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

kiko, that work for you?

Comment 25

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

> in Internet explorer PNG with transparency get all messed up, and look hideous.
> to the point they are distracting away from the ID column.

Further back :-) Where are these lock icons, when do they appear, and how can I
see one?

And yes, IE supports 1-bit transparency on PNGs just like GIF.

Gerv

Comment 26

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

(In reply to comment #25)
> Further back :-) Where are these lock icons, when do they appear, and how
> can I see one?

http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/buglist.cgi?short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=foo

Make sure you're logged in as [e-mail].  See bugs 1376 and 1933 in that
buglist.

The padlock icon is used next to secured bugs instead of the gray background
now, because we had too many css conflicts with the gray background (not to
mention it was darn ugly on sites that changed the background color otherwise)

Comment 27

[Christian Reis]

Comment on attachment 159449 [details]
new png IE compatible

This works fine and should keep Vlad happy (we want to keep Vlad happy of
course).

Comment 28

[Jason Pyeron]

and request checkin
more to go along with this is in bug 261210

Comment 29

[Christian Reis]

Landed in trunk and branch.

/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/images/padlock.png,v  <--  padlock.png
new revision: 1.2; previous revision: 1.1

/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/Attic/padlock.png,v  <--  padlock.png
new revision: 1.1.2.2; previous revision: 1.1.2.1