> If you'll so a little more research on the JPEG format, you'll find out
> that it is just a compressed GIF. So, the main reason why most people
> don't use JPEGs in their Web pages is due to the time it takes to
> overhead in loading the JPEG file. To some, especially me, it just isn't
> worth it.
That's not the whole story (in fact, it's not accurate -- GIF is already
a compressed format.) There are several tradeoffs between GIF and JPEG.
1) Decoding time: JPEG > GIF
2) Size: JPEG < GIF for complex images, but GIF < JPEG for simple ones
3) Loss: JPEG is lossy (to varying degrees, depending on compression)
while GIF is lossless
4) Image complexity: GIF is 256 color, JPEG 16.7 million
5) Browser support: GIF is much more widely supported
6) Patents: I won't go on about Unisys :-)
Therefore there are uses for each and that's not going to change. There
will be no wholesale conversion to JPEG, although there may be wholesale
conversion away from GIF depending on the progression of Unisys's patent
assertion on LZW.
-- Paul Phillips EMAIL: psp@ucsd.edu PHONE: (619) 220-0850 WWW: http://www.primus.com/staff/paulp/ FAX: (619) 220-0873