New Smiles

[DrStrangelove]

That's more of a problem with theme-makers too lazy to supply their own set now isn't it? >_>

Your statement is true. Unfortunately translucency in PNGs isn't supported for all browsers (IE6 notably), but they should work better than GIFs on modern browsers at least. It's a good idea to switch IMO.

Edit: While on the topic of smilies... it would be nice if you could install smilies packs into subdirectories and have them installed with a name consisting of 1) the name of the subdirectory and 2) the filename itself. If you have lots of smilies it's a mess if everything is in the same folder. Also PAK files doesn't necessarily make things easier, this suggestion would eliminate the need for PAK files.

[/a3]

And what about these smilies?



PNG doesn't support animations (although MNG does, which isn't supported by many browsers, and Mozilla's APNG also does, but other browsers are unlikely to support it).

So either PNGs are used for static and GIFs used for animations (which is rather inconsistent), or phpBB uses GIFs only.

[imkingdavid]

I don't see the need to add to the default set of smilies before 4.0. If you want different smilies on your board it isn't too difficult to add them yourself.

[hanakin]

From a design standpoint the current smilies are in fact still above the bar compared to other smiles used through out the web. As for the white pixels this is because the they are circular in nature and other than using pngs its quite difficult but not impossible to make them look correct. However this is partially due to the author not understanding how to work with gifs as well. he did not setup a proper matte color.

I do agree that in 4.0 they should be updated but not redesigned perhaps make them a little larger and fix the bad matting on them as for the png it is proper practice to use transparent pngs and only use gifs for animation and use a png fix if javascript is not enabled this will fail in older browsers how ever we should not care old browser should be treated as such and left to degrade.

There is no reason why someone should be using IE6 and below which accounts for less than 5% of the market share and javascript disabled browsers accounts for less than 5% of the market share as well. This number will drastically fall faster than ever before now that Microsoft no longer support xp

[/a3]

PNG is a great idea - however I think PNG should be used for everything except for smilies, because PNG doesn't support animations.

If MNG was well supported it would make things so much easier...

PNG/MNG supports alpha transparency so this would fix the "white pixel" around edges problem...


As for the Javascript PNG fix, I have used it in the past but I stopped using it mainly because it uses a lot more processing power, especially when there are a lot of PNG images.

[Sierron]

Perhaps just fixing the ones with wrong background.

Or

Using png for fixed smilies and gif for animated ones, but with right background transparency.

[rahber]

These smilies were created to work with default styles and they are doing good. Apart from the default styles they are fine on the custom styles except a few.
I don't think there is a need for the new smilies until 4.0

Background transparency will not solve the problem because there will be a border around them and when you use a dark style that gets dissolve with the background.

You can find hundreds of smiles all over internet and its not difficult to add custom smilies.