On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Ilmari Karonennospam@vyznev.net wrote: [snip]
It seems to me that delivering *static* thumbnails of GIF images, either in GIF or PNG format, would be a considerable improvement over the current situation. And indeed, the code to do that seems to be already in place: just set $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea = 0;
So— separate from animation why would you use an gif rather than a PNG? I can think of two reasons:
(1) you're making a spacer image and the gif is actually smaller, scaling isn't relevant here (2) you're using gif transparency and are obsessed with compatibility with old IE. Scaling doesn't tend to work really well with binary transparency.
In other cases the gif tends to be larger, loads slower, etc. They can be converted to PNG losslessly, so you should probably do so. What am I missing?