My current round of web wanking has led me to the minor image conundrums no doubt many other CSS wankers face. I have a layout design using images that are heavily but not completely photographic. I make heavy use of alpha channel along with CSS to do highlight tricks that don't require Javascript, multiple image loads or nastiness in the HTML itself. But I kept finding myself thinking things along the lines of:
"Gee, I wish JPEG had an alpha channel. Oh, well, I'll just suck it up and use really huge PNGs."
"Gee, I wish JPEG didn't make hard edges look like a bowl of legos floating in oatmeal. I guess I'll suck it up and use really huge PNGs."
"Gee, I wish Gimp could convert to indexed mode without making every image look like a schizophrenic Lite-Brite. I guess I have no choice but to suck it up and just keep using the really huge PNGs."
...and in the end the page looks *great*! And requires a few meg download per view! Ow! Ow, ow, ow. Oh, the poor users. Oh the poor uplink.
So how do we get the best of both worlds? The small size of a JPEG with the alpha and line-art deliciousness of PNG?
