Browsers with PNG Support

The Web, of course, was one of the main targets for PNG support since progressive display was/is so important to those browsing over a low-speed link (like Greg, at the time). GIF's interlacing scheme isn't very good, and JPEG's progressive mode was still catching on; PNG's seven-pass, two-dimensional scheme was designed to fill this gap. Likewise, PNG's alpha-channel support (including "RGBA palette" mode) and support for automatic gamma correction are particularly useful on the Web--at least where fully and correctly supported by browsers. This page lists standard 2D browsers; see the appropriate pages for listings of VRML browsers and other 3D applications.

Here are quick links to the browser section on the PNG Status page and to the "Big Two" browsers on this one:

• Status of PNG Support in Browsers

• Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac OS and for Windows (and formerly Unix)
• Netscape Navigator (and Mozilla/Firefox/etc.)

As with the other applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known, but if a link is broken, check the location and see if an updated version is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems or platforms are printed in (parenthesized italics). If the browser or plug-in includes HTML-editing capabilities that extend to converting or modifying images on the page, it is noted as "read/write" support.

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

• 1X [Science Traveller International] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; no transparency support as of version 0.12b; reportedly broken OBJECT support; may require ActiveX for all features.

• Act [Jan Verhoeven] (Windows 9x/ME) - version 5a (reportedly completely broken in versions 6-9); read-only; freeware.

• AIR Mosaic - see SPRYNET Mosaic below

• Amaya [W3C] (Unix/X, Win32) - all versions; read-only; broken, binary transparency in "normal" versions (colormapped images only; color-based rather than palette-index-based); alpha support in OpenGL versions for Windows (but no support for background images, only solid colors); partially broken gamma support; good OBJECT support; reportedly poor dithering in 8-bit modes; freeware with source. (This is the W3C's testbed web client for new HTML, CSS, XML, and MathML features. It has both browsing and authoring [editing] capabilities, and it can create client-side image maps on inline PNGs.)

• AMosaic [AMosaic development team] (Amiga) - any version via a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for a couple); read-only; JNG support with a JNG DataType; requires MUI; freeware with source. (This product has been discontinued. Version 2.0, released in July 1995, apparently was the final release; the team then went on to create IBrowse, below.)

• aMozillaX [Free Amiga Organization] (Amiga 68k/PPC) - all versions; read-only. (This product has been discontinued.)

• ANT Fresco [ANT] (RISC OS, others) - all versions; read-only; binary transparency only; commercial. (This was the browser originally chosen for Oracle's Network Computer in early 1996. As of March 1999, ArgoNet had taken over sales and support of ANT software for RISC OS, but they themselves were subsequently bought out by Freedom2, and that arrangement appears to have ended. As of late 2001, ANT is once again selling Fresco, but this time to the embedded market--set-top box manufacturers, PDA makers, etc. Linux- and Windows-based demo versions are supposedly available upon request.)

• AOL Browser - see Internet Explorer below

• Arachne [Arachne Labs] (DOS/386, Linux/SVGA, Linux/GGI) - version 1.07(?) and later; read-only; no transparency support; shareware (freeware for non-commercial use). (PNG is not supported in the DOS version "on computers which are not compatible with i386"; the 16bit.apm downgrade disables PNG support entirely. Linux versions require ImageMagick convert or possibly png2bmp.)

• ArcWeb [Stewart Brodie] (RISC OS) - version 1.70 and later; read-only

• Arena [W3C, Yggdrasil et al.] (Unix/X) - version 0.98b and later; read-only; full alpha support (except uses its own "sandy" background pattern; screenshots); full gamma support; full 16/48-bit PNG image support; progressive display of pages but not of individual images; freeware with source. (As of beta-3b, W3C development ceased in favor of Amaya, above; an Internet-based development team hosted at Yggdrasil's site took over. But that effort appears to have died, too, as of March 1998; a final, minimally changed version 0.3.62 was released in November 1998. PNG support is [partly?] broken in version 0.3.07 and later, but beta-3b is still available.)

• Ariadna [AMSD] (Win32) - version 1.2 and later; read-only. (NT/Alpha and Russian versions also available.)

• AWeb [Yvon Rozijn, AWeb developers] (Amiga) - any version via a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for several), but better and faster support via the AWebPNG plug-in (progressive display, gamma correction, transparency and 24-bit support; 40k; included with AWeb 3.2 and later); read-only; JNG support with a JNG DataType; does not require MUI; freeware (APL) with C source (CVS) as of 8 June 2002. Note that the AWebPNG plug-in was the third most popular Amiga download during March 1998--outstanding! (Click here if link breaks.)

• Blazer [Palm] (Palm OS) - version 4.0(?) and later; read-only; binary transparency with bad threshold (all non-opaque pixels treated as fully transparent); no gamma support; commercial. (This is the web browser that comes with the Treo 650, Tungsten, and Zira PDAs.)

• Browse [Acorn] (RISC OS) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support in version 1.25 and later (including RGBA backgrounds, blended with BGCOLOR); full gamma support; progressive display of interlaced images; commercial. (This product has been discontinued. Alas, Acorn officially died in June 1999, taking with it this greatest of all PNG-supporting browsers. Half of the company was bought by Pace Micro--along with the rights to Browse, apparently--and the remainder reformed as Element14, which has no web site as of early 2000.)

• BrowseX [Browsex Systems] (Unix/X, Win32) - all versions; read-only; binary transparency (only for completely transparent pixels); no gamma support; no progressive display; uses Img, libpng and zlib; freeware (Artistic) with source. (This is a Tcl/Tk-based browser with some handy features. As of October 2000, it's still in beta and occasionally crashes on pages with lots of images.)

• CAB [Application Systems Heidelberg] (Atari TOS) - version 2.8 and later; read-only; commercial. (This is a German browser, but all resources are also available in English and French as separate downloads.)

• Chimera [John Kilburg] (Unix/X) - any version? via external decoders (but images appear inlined); read-only; progressive display in 2.0 and later; freeware with source. (See Roman Czyborra's sample configuration for an example of how to set this up, especially the convert and mailcap files.)

• Closure [Gilbert Baumann] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a web browser written entirely in Common Lisp [the Allegro variant is preferred], including a basic PNG decoder [src/renderer/png-images.lisp] and zlib/inflate implementation [src/net/deflate.lisp]. It appears to have died quietly in June 1999, however. Note that the home page does not link to the latest source code; see this directory for newer code.)

• Communicator - see Netscape Navigator below

• CSCMail [Steven "Count Zero" Kordik] (Unix/GTK+) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support (screenshots); requires CscHTML, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an e-mail client written in Perl that has full HTML-viewing capability--in fact, it includes a simple web browser. See the toolkits page for details on the CscHTML widget.)

• Device Mosaic [OpenTV / Spyglass] (Win32, VxWorks, Linux, OS-9000, pSOS, WinCE, EPOC, QNX, LynxOS) - version 5.0 and later; read-only; binary transparency support (full alpha support coming ~Autumn 2002); no gamma support; no progressive display of interlacing; uses libpng and zlib; commercial.

• Dillo [Jorge Arellano Cid, Sebastian Geerken, Luca Rota, and others] (Unix/GTK+) - version 0.0.4 and later; read-only; full alpha support (except no support for background images as of version 0.8.1; 0.6.2 screenshots); full gamma support; freeware (GPL) with source.

• Encompass [Rodney Dawes] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions? read/write; no transparency support? uses gdk-pixbuf, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (Encompass can save images in PNG and JPEG format [possibly screenshots] as well as read them as part of a web page.)

• Enhanced Mosaic - see Spyglass Mosaic below

• Epiphany [Epiphany Developers] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support (presumably); freeware (GPL) with source. (Like Galeon, this browser is based on the the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko, and requires both Mozilla and the GNOME environment to be installed in order to run. It is intended to have a quick, simple user interface and to conform to the GNOME accessibility guidelines [HIG].)

• Firebird - see Mozilla / Firefox below

• Firefox - see Mozilla / Firefox below

• Flash 4 Player [Macromedia] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 4.0 beta 1 and later; read-only. (This is generally used as a plug-in for Navigator or Internet Explorer, but it may include stand-alone capabilities as well. Once 4.0 is officially released, the Linux, Solaris and Java versions will presumably be included, too. Note that PNG images are supported within Flash 4, but it is not clear that this plug-in can view PNGs outside of Flash 4 animations.)

• Galeon [Galeon Authors] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support (presumably); freeware (GPL) with source. (Galeon actually uses the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko, and requires both Mozilla and the GNOME environment to be installed in order to run.)

• Grail [Corporation for National Research Initiatives] (Unix/X, Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 0.3b3 and later via the Python Imaging Library (PIL); read-only; freeware with source. (0.3b2 also supports PNG via a simple patch from Andre Derrick Balsa. CNRI ceased development on Grail as of version 0.6, released 1 April 1999.)

• HTMLayout browse.exe [Terra Informatica] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support; uses libpng and zlib; commercial (freeware demo browser). (This is a freely downloadable sample application to demonstrate the commercial HTMLayout DLL, a lightweight HTML/CSS rendering component with no dependencies on other browsers or browser components. PNG is supported for both foreground and background images, including with alpha-transparency.)

• IBrowse [HiSOFT Systems] (Amiga) - version 1.2 and later natively, or any previous version via a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for a couple); read-only; full alpha support? JNG support with a JNG DataType; progressive display; requires MUI 3.8 or later; uses libpng and zlib; commercial.

• iCab [Alexander Clauss / iCab] (Mac 68k/PPC) - all versions? read-only; full alpha support in version 1.8 beta and later (screenshots); no gamma support; no progressive display; commercial (beta version is freely downloadable).

• ICEbrowser [ICEsoft] (Java) - version 5.0(?) and later; read-only; reportedly full alpha support; no gamma support; commercial. (This probably requires Java 2 SDK 1.3 for its PNG support. Prior to 2002, it was known as ICE Browser and was available separately; now it is a component within larger products.)

• Internet Explorer [Microsoft] (Mac PPC, Mac OS X) - version 5.0 and later; read-only; full alpha support (screenshots), though broken for tiled page- and table-background images smaller than 64x64 (switches to binary transparency for performance reasons [should be fixed in one of next two versions]; can work around bug by manually tiling image to be larger than 64 pixels in at least one dimension); gamma support, including sRGB, but inconsistent with HTML and CSS colors and unlabelled PNG and GIF images; reportedly ICC profile support (old version only?); progressive display of interlaced images (replicating method); broken default handling on OS X for standalone PNGs (versions 5.1 and 5.2 save to disk rather than view due to QuickTime bogosity; see Matthew Rothenberg's Mac OS X Hint for simple fix); uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (Note that AOL 5.0 is apparently built on MSIE 4.5 or earlier, so it has no PNG support at all. No word on later versions.)

• Internet Explorer [Microsoft] (Win32) - version 4.0b1 and later; read-only; full alpha support as of version 7.0b1 (screenshots), but broken alpha support in earlier versions;¹ inconsistent/broken gamma support;² no ICC-profile (iCCP) support; no color-correction support; progressive display of interlaced images (replicating method); broken OBJECT support in version 4.x;³ MNG support via Jason Summers' MNG4IE ActiveX control; version 4.0 crashes on large PNG chunks;⁴ version 5.0 prints palette images with black (or dark gray) backgrounds under Win98, sometimes with radically altered colors;⁵ fails to display PNG images used as CSS backgrounds;⁶ fails to display PNG images of 4097 or 4098 bytes in size; sometimes completely loses ability to display PNGs (see FAQ page for various fixes); freeware. (Note that Microsoft claims version 4.0 "does not include the functionality to view .png files," which presumably refers to its inability to display standalone PNGs;⁷ this is partly fixed in 5.0.⁸ Note also that the Windows 3.x version of IE has no PNG support at all, but the IE-based AOL browser for Windows does, at least from version 4.0 onward. Both the AOL Browser and the MSN Browser are IE-based and share the same features and bugs. IE versions 4.01 and 5.0 were briefly available for Solaris/SPARC and HP-UX/PA-RISC, as well.) Bugs and other feedback can be reported on the Microsoft product feedback page (which doesn't appear to require any personal information beyond an e-mail address).
  1. simple transparency only, with bad threshold for transparency vs. opacity, and only for palette images; completely fails to render some transparent palette images (e.g., bottom four here), apparently due to nearly-but-not-quite-opaque alpha values; non-palette images are rendered fully opaque against a light gray background; 32-bit alpha transparency (but not palette alpha) supported in versions 5.5 through 6.x if and only if HTML content is rewritten to use Microsoft-specific DirectX extensions to CSS (See also this extended discussion, Bob Osola's JavaScript/conditional comment solution, Sean Foy's PNGHack ASP.Net custom controls, Jorge Nerín's quick summary, Ranjan's "pure" CSS solution, Dean Edwards' general MSIE-CSS-fixup code (CSS + JavaScript), and Justin Koivisto's PHP auto-rewrite solution. Further caveats for DirectX approach: if the PNG image's width and height attributes are missing, the width and height of the placeholder image will be used instead; if the placeholder image is missing, the browser's stock "missing-image" icon will be placed over the PNG.)
  2. handles PNGs with gAMA chunks differently (inconsistently) from HTML and CSS colors, from unlabelled images (GIFs or PNGs), and from PNGs with sRGB chunks (see 7.0b1 screenshots)--apparently uses display-system gamma of approximately 1.93 instead of 2.2 (i.e., colors appear slightly dark)
  3. only if "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins" security preference enabled; adds unnecessary scrollbars; version 4.0 renders all OBJECTs in nested set, not just outermost
  4. especially those created with the "Save" function in Macromedia Fireworks--use "Export" for final PNGs
  5. reportedly fixed in version 5.5, and doesn't affect NT or Win2k
  6. as reported by a W3C member; another user reports that version 5.0 and later does support this
  7. i.e., those that are simply referenced via links or opened from disk--it can view ones that are inlined on an HTML page via IMG tags just fine, and a registry hack is reported to fix the standalone problem
  8. i.e., it works on some systems but not on others, and it's not directly related to running NT vs. Windows 9x but may have something to do with other PNG-capable viewers being installed

• Kazehakase [Hiroyuki Ikezoe and others] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support (presumably); freeware (GPL) with source. (Like Galeon and Epiphany, Kazehakase is based on the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko. Unlike them, it appears not to require Mozilla to be installed separately. Differentiating features include remote-bookmark support, "rich" bookmarks [i.e., with images and fragments of page text], and full-text search in history.)

• K-Meleon [K-Meleon Team] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support (presumably); freeware (GPL) with source. (K-Meleon actually uses the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko. Unlike Epiphany and Galeon, it does not require Mozilla to be separately installed.)

• Konqueror [KDE developers] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read-only; only binary transparency prior to version 3.0; full 32-bit alpha support as of version 3.0; binary transparency for palette images in versions through 3.2.2; broken single-shade transparency support for 16-bit grayscale; MNG support when compiled with Qt 2.2.0 or later and libmng; JNG support as of 14 October 2003; freeware (GPL) with source. (This was originally a file manager, kfm, with integrated web-browsing capabilities, but it has since grown into a very fast and complete web browser and a components-based file viewer.)

• Links [Twibright Labs] (Unix/X, Linux/SVGA, Linux/fbdev, OS/2, Win32/X, Atheos) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; requires libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This was originally a text-mode browser similar to Lynx, but an optional GUI interface with PNG [and other image-format] support was added in version 2.0.)

• MindWalker - see Voyager below

• mMosaic [Dauphin Gilles / NCSA X Mosaic Team] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; uses libpng and zlib; PNG dithering is poor (libpng problem); no progressive display; no alpha support; no simple transparency support; no gamma support; fails on 13 valid PNGs on PngSuite page; freeware with source. (This is an enhanced version of NCSA X Mosaic 2.7b4, extended by Gilles to support tables, Java applets [via the free Java virtual machine Kaffe], and the free Motif clone, Lesstif. Development ended with version 3.7.2. The browser was further enhanced by Winfried Szukalski to include MNG and JNG support, but development on that has also ended, at version 3.8.22.)

• Mosaic 95 - see SPRYNET Mosaic below

• Mozilla / Firefox [mozilla.org, Netscape Communications] (Unix/X, Win32, Mac OS, etc.) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support on Linux and Mac since 13 April 2000 and on Windows since 19 July 2000 (Linux screenshots), but poorer quality on sub-24-bit X displays; broken binary transparency support in versions between June and August 2001 (bug 84980); dithered alpha as a fallback option on all platforms; full gamma support; MNG and JNG support from 12 June 2000 through 23 March 2001 and from 17 December 2001 through 12 June 2003 (in CVS, anyway; 0.9.7 release of 21 December 2001 did not include fix, and all 1.4 releases did have support); progressive display (replicating method; limits image size to dimensions of 8000 pixels; uses libpng and zlib; freeware (NPL/MPL/GPL) with source. (This is the mostly-rewritten-from-scratch code base on which are based Netscape Navigator 6.0 and later, Epiphany, Galeon, K-Meleon, Kazehakase, and Phoenix a.k.a. Mozilla Firebird a.k.a. Mozilla Firefox.)

• MOZZAM [Steffen] (Amiga) - all versions; read-only; coming.

• NCSA MacMosaic [NCSA MacMosaic Team] (Mac OS) - version 3.0A1 and later; read-only; gamma support in version 3.0B3 and later; optional progressive display of interlaced images (either sparse or replicating method, or none at all); alpha support slightly buggy; freeware with source. (This product has been discontinued.)

• NCSA X Mosaic [NCSA X Mosaic Team] (Unix/X) - version 2.7b1 and later; read-only; PNG dithering is poor (libpng problem); no progressive display; no alpha support; no simple transparency support; no gamma support; freeware with source. (This product has been discontinued.)

• NetFront [ACCESS] (PocketPC, Linux) - version 2.5(?) and later; MNG support as of version 3.0; uses libpng and zlib; read-only; commercial. (This is an embedded web browser for PDAs, 2.5G and 3G cell phones, and other "Internet appliances." PNG and MNG support appear to be optional features, at least for the cell-phone versions.)

• Netkit [Netsurfer] (NeXTStep/OpenStep) - all versions; read-only. (This product has been discontinued. Netkit was actually an object-oriented toolkit for creating custom browsers; it looked pretty cool.)

• NetPositive [Be] (BeOS) - version 2.1 and later (uses new PNG Translator in BeOS 4.5); read-only; full alpha support as of version 2.2 (screenshots); no gamma support; no progressive display; no support for PNGs as HTML background images; commercial.

• Netscape Navigator [Netscape Communications] (Unix/X, Win32, Mac OS, OS/2) - version 4.04 and later; progressive display (replicating method); full alpha and gamma support as of version 6.0PR2 (see Mozilla / Firefox above) but no transparency or gamma support whatsoever in version 4.x; nearly complete MNG and JNG support in version 6.0 and later (see MNG apps page for limitations and bugs) and in older versions via Jason Summers' MNG plug-in; versions 4.04 through 4.76 treat black as transparent in opaque palette images with a background chunk (test) and reportedly do even worse with 64-bit RGBA images; limits image size to linear dimensions of 8000 pixels; attempts to display invalid PNGs; versions 4.04 through 4.5 have a bug in their "Accept" headers (missing comma) that causes Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Oracle Application Server not to send static PNG images (images dynamically generated by CGI or ASP scripts apparently are not affected; bug is fixed in version 4.51 and later); uses libpng and zlib; freeware. (Versions 2.0 and later also support PNG via the plug-ins listed below, but note that Netscape plug-ins currently do not support true inlined images--they only support images inlined with Netscape's non-standard EMBED tag, which is not usable by most other browsers, or with HTML 4.0's OBJECT tag, as long as HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes are included in the tag. In any case, Netscape 4.x's OBJECT support is broken, too. Version 6.0, however, is based on Mozilla, which has excellent OBJECT, PNG and MNG support [at least until the latter was removed again]. This product has been discontinued. See Mozilla / Firefox above.)

  • PNG plug-in [Giorgio Costa] (OS/2) - all versions; read-only; no transparency support; progressive display (replicating method); uses libpng and zlib; 369k (beta only; also via ftp: US, Italy)

  • QuickTime PNG plug-in [Apple] (Win32, Mac OS) - version 3.0 and later; read-only; full gamma support? no transparency support; no progressive display. (The plug-in actually handles several media types. It also installs itself into every browser on the machine, including Internet Explorer; to remove, find the appropriate Plugins directory or directories and delete npqtplugin.dll .)

  • PNG Live plug-in [Siegel & Gale] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; broken gamma support; alpha support in 2.0b1 and later (but broken: uses PNG background chunk instead of browser background); progressive display in 2.0b5 and later (replicating method); uses libpng and zlib. (Development on this product appears to have ceased as of June 1997, and the web site was shut down in early 1999--which is unfortunate since its alpha support was better than any other Netscape-compatible solution to date [as of September 1999]. Version 1.0 also worked with Internet Explorer 3.0 and supported PowerMacs as well as Win32. Version 2.0b5 was the final public release; the rumored PowerMac and Irix ports were never completed.)

  • KeyView Pro [FTP Software / Verity] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 4.2 and later; read/write. [FTP Software sold KeyView to Verity in late 1997.]

  • Quick View Plus [Stellent / Avantstar] (Win32, embedded) - version 4.5 and later; read-only; uses zlib. (This is apparently the Nth-generation descendant of Mastersoft's Viewer 95. Mastersoft was acquired by Frame, which was acquired by Adobe, which renamed the viewer to Adobe File Utilities by Mastersoft before selling it to Inso in 1997, which may have merged it with their competing Quick View Plus viewer and licensed Jasc as a distributor in 1998. In July 2000 the QVP portion of Inso was sold to IntraNet Solutions, which was subsequently either acquired by or renamed to Stellent, who ported it to various PDAs and cell phones and apparently also licensed it to Avanstar for retail sales. [As of as of early 2004, Jasc no longer distributes it.] Avanstar's version is available only for 32-bit Windows platforms and appears definitely not to support any sort of conversion.)

  • CSView Plugins [CSU Software Solutions] (Win32) - all versions? read-only or read/write, depending; commercial. (CSView40, CSView130 and CSView150 all include stand-alone viewers and Netscape plug-ins. Some configurations include batch converters capable of writing PNG images, as well.)

  • PNG plug-in [Sam Bushell] (Mac OS) - all versions; read-only; progressive display; uses libpng and zlib (beta only; superseded by QuickTime PNG plug-in above)

  • pngplug [Silicon Graphics] (SGI Irix/X) - all versions; read-only; also supports RGB and MS BMP image formats. (This plug-in is available on the Irix 6.2 update CD, along with Netscape 2.0S and half a dozen other plug-ins.)

  • PNG Magick plug-in [Rasca Gmelch] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; freeware. (This is still an alpha version; it requires ImageMagick's convert utility. This product has been discontinued.)

  • FIGleaf Inline plug-in [Carberry Technology / EBT] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; also supported CGM, RGB, TIFF, PBM/PGM/PPM, encapsulated PostScript, Group 4 fax, Sun raster and MS BMP and WMF image formats. (This product has been discontinued. The PNG support was flaky, anyway. Mac OS and Windows 3.x versions were never released.)

  • Panacea PNG plug-in [Panacea Software] (OS/2) - all versions; read-only. (This product has been discontinued. It was only available as a beta for a couple of weeks before being pulled.)

• NetSurf [NetSurf developers] (RISC OS) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support; full gamma support; nearly complete MNG and JNG support; freeware (GPL) with source.

• Netsurfer [Netsurfer] (NeXTStep/OpenStep) - version 1.1 and later; read-only. (This product has been discontinued.)

• OmniWeb [Omni Development] (NeXTStep/OpenStep, Mac OS X Server) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; full alpha support in version 3.x and later, possibly some 2.x? (screenshots); full gamma support; progressive display of interlaced images (sparse method); freeware as of version 4.0 (formerly commercial). (Versions prior to 3.0 or 3.1 were for NeXTStep/OpenStep only, and versions from 4.0 onward are for Mac OS X only.)

• Opera [Opera Software] (Win32, OS/2, BeOS, Mac PPC, Mac OS X, Linux/X, Solaris/X, Symbian OS) - version 3.51 and later (version 6.0 and later for Symbian); full alpha support as of version 6.0 (screenshots); broken binary transparency in older versions (apparently only for palette-based images, where the alpha value of the first palette entry is misinterpreted as the index of the palette entry to be made fully transparent, a la GIF); progressive display (except transparent PNGs on Windows versions); full gamma support (assumes a file gamma of 1/2.0 for unlabelled PNGs, vs. 1/2.2 for GIFs and JPEGs; fixed in 6.1); bogus "out of place IHDR" errors and segfaults in Linux version 4.x or 5.x; read-only; freeware (formerly adware/commercial). (Version 3.50 supported PNG only via old-style plug-ins, such as PNG Live 1.0, that supported neither transparency nor progressive display; see Netscape Navigator above. Version 3 and possibly 4 also supported Windows 3.x, but that support was dropped from more recent versions. Transparency support has not been verified in Symbian versions.)

• Oregano [Oregan Networks / Castle Technology] (TV/STB, RISC OS) - all versions; read-only; no support for PNG background images and only binary transparency in version 1; full alpha support as of version 2 (screenshots); full gamma support (except for palette images, apparently); commercial. (Version 2 is considered to be a nearly complete rewrite and is arguably a different browser.)

• Phoenix - see Mozilla / Firefox above

• Safari [Apple] (Mac OS X) - all versions; read-only; full alpha support; full gamma support; freeware with partial source (back end only). (This is a lightweight web browser based on Konqueror's rendering engine, KHTML. Note that the underlying OS version has some effect on PNG performance and conformance; for example, according to Dave Hyatt, Tiger's renderers are faster and fix some gamma issues in Panther.)

• Sega Dreamcast Web Browser [Planetweb] (Sega Dreamcast) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; full alpha support; no gamma support; progressive display; commercial.

• SPRYNET Mosaic [SPRY / CompuServe] (Windows 3.x) - all versions; read-only; full gamma support. (Also known as Mosaic 95, Mosaic in a Box for Windows 95, SPRY Mosaic 4.0 and/or AIR Mosaic. This thing used to change names and web sites every couple of months and now appears to be completely dead.)

• Spyglass Mosaic [Spyglass] (Windows 3.x, Windows NT, Mac OS, Unix/X) - version 2.2; read-only. (This appears to have died as a consumer product but to have been resurrected as a variety of embedded and server products. See Device Mosaic above and Spyglass Prism below.)

• Spyglass Prism [OpenTV / Spyglass] (Solaris, Windows NT) - all versions? read/write? commercial. (See also this December 1996 press release. Spyglass was acquired by OpenTV in July 2000.)

• Strata [Kirix] (Win32, Linux/X) - version 2.1 and later; read-only; uses libpng and zlib; commercial. (This is a Mozilla-based "data browser," with emphasis on browsing databases and spreadsheet-type files.)

• Termite / Webite [DoggySoft] (RISC OS) - any version with David McCormack's Progress helper app, listed on the viewers page; read-only; commercial.

• UdiWWW [Bernd Richter] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - all versions since 29 September 1995; read-only (also see Stroud's review)

• UP.Browser [Phone.com] (cell phones) - version 3.2 and later; read-only; 8-bit (palette) support only; commercial. (This is a "microbrowser" for cell phones, especially those with color displays; version 3.2 is the first to support both PNG and color.)

• ViewML [Century Software, Monta Vista Software, et al.] (Linux/X, Linux/MicroWindows) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) or commercial with source. (This is a lightweight web browser, especially suited to handhelds and embedded devices. As of late 2003, it is included as part of the PIXIL embedded environment.)

• Voyager [VaporWare] (Amiga) - version 2.7 and later (native), or any earlier version with a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for a couple); read-only; progressive display; binary transparency (with bad threshold) in version 3.0; full alpha support in version 3.3.122 (beta) and later on "MorphOS" public beta; JNG support with a JNG DataType; gamma correction enabled in version 2.96.39 and later; version 3.1 is claimed to have "heavily improved PNG support"; update 12.5 of the V³ Image Decoders fixes a transparency/alpha problem; requires MUI; uses libpng and zlib; commercial / shareware. (Also known as MindWalker in the Amiga Technologies Surfer Pack. Version 2.7 introduced native PNG support and was known as VoyagerNG; version 3.x is known as V³.)

• WebC [EBS] (embedded, Win32) - version 2.3 and later; read-only; MNG support as of version 2.4.3; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; commercial (royalty-free) with C source.

• Webster XL [R-Comp] (RISC OS) - version 1.9(?) and later; read-only; full alpha support claimed (including RGBA background images); commercial.

• WebTV [WebTV Networks / Philips / Sony] (WebTV) - versions since January 1999? read-only; no progressive display; full alpha support in versions since August 2000(?) (apparently); 32-bit alpha support (9 transparency levels; screenshots) and binary transparency for palette images (first palette entry only, regardless of number of transparent colors) in older releases; CSS background-image support; commercial. (This is a web browser embedded in a set-top box; it displays pages on a standard analog television set. See also the WebTV Viewer for Win32, below.)

• WebTV Viewer [WebTV Networks] (Win32) - all versions? read-only; full alpha support in version 2.5 build 117(?) and later; CSS background-image support; freeware. (This is really a developer tool for testing web pages against the limited resolution of WebTV hardware [above], but it's also one of the few Windows browsers to have excellent PNG support--along with Mozilla / Firefox / Netscape 6.x and Opera 6.x, of course.)

• WebView [South Pacific Information Services] (Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 2.6 and later; read-only

• WinCIM / `CSi CompuServe software' [CompuServe] (Windows 3.x) - version 2.0.1 and later; read-only; progressive display of interlaced images (replicating method)

• XEmacs [Lucid, Sun, UIUC, etc.] (Unix/X) - version 19.14 and later; read-only; uses libpng and zlib. (This is lumped in with the browsers due to W3 mode.)

• XMayday [Axene] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; commercial. (This was an HTML browser for local files only; it was primarily intended to be used for viewing documentation in HTML format, including that accompanying Axene's other products on the office and business apps page. Version 1.2.3 was the final release. As of March 1998, Axene appears to have folded.)

• X Mosaic - see NCSA X Mosaic above

• X-Smiles [X-Smiles Developers] (Java) - all versions (if running on Java2D, i.e., JDK 1.3 and later); read-only; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a "Java-based XML browser [that] is intended for both desktop use and embedded network devices and to support multimedia services.")

• Zen [Tomas Berndtsson] (Linux/fbcon, Linux/GTK+) - version 0.1.0 and later; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source.

Here are some related PNG pages at this site:

• PNG-supporting Applications
  • Image Viewers
  • Image Editors
  • Image Converters
  • 3D Applications
  • Games / Entertainment
  • Office / Business Applications
  • Scientific / Graphing Applications
  • Miscellaneous Applications
• PNG support in VRML browsers
• PNG-supporting Hardware

• PNG Home Page
• Complete PNG Site Map

Copyright © 1995-2011 Greg Roelofs.