Image Transparency, You Want it? You Got it!
June 06, 2008 | Posted by apokalyptik
After a lot of tinkering, fiddling, poking, and prodding we’ve revamped the image support in gravatar. Now if you upload a GIF or a PNG we will preserve any transparency that might be in the image and serve that image to you as a PNG.
Unfortunately this does not retroactively fix existing images with black instead of transparent backgrounds. You’ll want to re-upload your transparent images, assign the new image to your email addresses. After that, give it about 30 minutes and clear your cache. Everything should work and look just fine.
A note for all you webmasters out there: If you’re worried about what transparent PNG images look like for your IE visitors, I would recommend taking a look at this handy Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6 page which offers an explanation, information on workarounds, and a drop-in javascript which will work for all the images on a page.
Until next time – happy blogging!
joint
theseg Says:
June 6, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Great work!
However, and I hate to be ‘that guy’, but there’s a slight issue with alphas still. Just look at my icon here and you’ll see that my drop shadow isn’t a bit wonky. The original PNG has a smoother fade, but Gravatar makes the shadow hard. Still, it’s welcomed progress!
Δfoxtrot Says:
June 6, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Thanks guys! I’ll certainly check it out,
Paul Says:
June 6, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I’ve always meant to ask: Is there any way to make new images show up faster? They always seem to take 30 mins or so.
Kelson Says:
June 6, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Yay! Now to go re-upload…
human3rror Says:
June 6, 2008 at 11:20 pm
w00t!
yorgyb Says:
June 7, 2008 at 12:52 am
Happy Transparencing!!!
me Says:
June 7, 2008 at 1:39 am
all righty. good info
tptblog Says:
June 7, 2008 at 3:14 am
Sounds great! Thanks for the new feature.
Thomas Clausen Says:
June 7, 2008 at 7:28 am
Cool, thanks a bunch.
Chris Says:
June 7, 2008 at 8:32 am
If you’re worried about what transparent PNG images look like for your IE visitors [...]
I wouldn’t recommend doing any hacks to support an eight year old browser. It’s history and people who use the thing need to be punished.
jdub Says:
June 7, 2008 at 9:20 am
Thanks heaps, dudes!
Paul D. Waite Says:
June 7, 2008 at 12:53 pm
> I wouldn’t recommend doing any hacks to support an eight year old browser. It’s history and people who use the thing need to be punished.
Most people have no idea what a browser is, let alone that old ones don’t work very well. They don’t deserve punishment. A little work to give them a nicer experience is well worth it.
Retodon8 Says:
June 7, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Yay! Thanks for this.
Clark Says:
June 7, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Yeah! Thanks guys !
lm86 Says:
June 7, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Cool!
hemasunder Says:
June 7, 2008 at 4:41 pm
thanks for that, cool feature
الجمر تحت الرماد Says:
June 7, 2008 at 8:30 pm
السلام عليكم
أبدأ كلامي بشعر لإقبال
كالطير غايته التقاط الحب في ظل القصور
هو طائر لكنه لم يدر تحليق النسور
Dougal Says:
June 7, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Here’s a WordPress plugin which implements an IE png fix:
http://wp-plugins.novacorps.com/iepngfix/
I’ve used it on one of my sites which needed a transparent png in the header, and it seemed to work just fine
Fahmi Adam Says:
June 8, 2008 at 2:22 am
yay! thanks guys.
افكار و احلام » Gravatar restores PNG support Says:
June 8, 2008 at 5:05 am
[...] as happy. Finally, today I happily discovered that Gravatar had indeed come back from 1995 and had restored support for PNGs and transparency. Even better, when I attempted to log in, I could supply my WordPress.com password to prove I owned [...]
Gravatar.com Supports Transparency - Finally! | dotNETwizard.NET Says:
June 8, 2008 at 11:35 am
[...] According to Chris Pirillo from Gravatar Blog He said the following. After a lot of tinkering, fiddling, poking, and prodding we’ve revamped the image support in gravatar. Now if you upload a GIF or a PNG we will preserve any transparency that might be in the image and serve that image to you as a PNG. [...]
Bruce Says:
June 8, 2008 at 1:12 pm
TheKhakinator Says:
June 8, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Nice to see Gravatar still innovating.
John Drinkwater Says:
June 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Bah at having to find a file from many years ago that worked fine before you went mad… if only you’d kept the originals!
raoulman Says:
June 9, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Ok, it’s good !
yawner Says:
June 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Finally, never really understood why this was removed in the first place.. Thanks for listening to our concerns.
brian Says:
June 9, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Guess it’s time I got a *real* gravatar together. Nice to see the support for transparency.
The Conference » Blog Archive » GRAVATAR TRANSPARENCY Says:
June 9, 2008 at 5:35 pm
[...] Image Transparency, You Want it? You Got it! [...]
David Says:
June 9, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Yay! Glad to see my transparent avatars will work now. Thanks!
racoon42 Says:
June 10, 2008 at 8:20 am
Nice thing
Michael Wheeler Says:
June 11, 2008 at 8:52 am
How long before OpenID support?
Jason Ho Says:
June 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm
nice one there…looking forward to using it
Don Worthley Says:
June 11, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Great job with identicons, wavatars and monsterids and now transparency. You guys are making some awesome progress! By the way, we’re adding Gravatar support to the blog module in DotNetNuke which should be out within a month, so you’ll be getting some DNN love soon.
da scritch net works Says:
June 13, 2008 at 9:18 am
Regardez : transparent… comme avant !…
Afin d’être totalement transparent (et pas que dans les PNG), ce texte comporte du Microsoft-bashing rétrograde (concernant leurs produits avant 2006). Faut reconnaitre qu’ils ont fait des efforts, et qu’il est temps de moderniser les… visiteurs…
jurimi Says:
June 14, 2008 at 5:08 am
Excellent work!
Thank for your hard work, Gravatar in introducing people to new ideas and transparency.
oterosantos Says:
June 22, 2008 at 11:39 am
Nice!
Wesley Says:
June 22, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Ninguein fala portugues aki naum eah’
Mike Foley Says:
June 25, 2008 at 12:00 am
Not too shabby.
Mike Says:
June 28, 2008 at 5:05 am
I will check this out.. Great work.
Matt A. Says:
July 8, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Is supporting png and transparent images really that innovative? I don’t know, it seems like this should have been a given.
Psycho Dude Says:
July 10, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Nice addition, good to know things are still improving greatly
.
maryan33 Says:
July 13, 2008 at 12:46 am
Thank you.
Bert Says:
August 12, 2008 at 3:55 am
Very nice, tnx
asghar Says:
August 17, 2008 at 12:40 pm
hey, ur avatar fits the title, u see?!
fileinabox Says:
November 8, 2008 at 11:26 am
Thanks guys! For now I will just stick with my jpeg because I am not so keen on the IE6 transparency fix scripts.
Oh, wouldn’t you just love it if Microsoft had put a time bomb in all IE6 installs? Just one click and boom! All IE6 browsers in the whole world forcedly upgraded to IE7
Yes, I know it is a compulsory update for home users, but there are so many retarded company IT departments where they simply block all browser upgrades…
Austin Loan Signing Agents Says:
November 25, 2008 at 12:43 pm
That’s great new, I know many of the images I use online aren’t jpeg.
Molly Says:
November 27, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Wow!! It’s getting better and better. Keep it up man.,
francobollo Says:
December 10, 2008 at 4:39 pm
if it is possible I want a translation in italian language.
Lo hice y lo entendí | Primer aniversario del blog Says:
December 18, 2008 at 9:12 am
[...] Actualización 7/6/08: Gravatar vuelve a soportar las imágenes con fondo transparente. [...]
morozgrafix Says:
February 2, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I can’t seem to be able to upload PNG and retain transparency. When I get to crop & finish i still get black background. Is there anything special that needs to be done to get transparent PNG working?