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Definition of PNG

By David Bolton, About.com

Definition: PNG is short for Portable Network Graphics and was created as a more powerful alternative to the GIF file format because of the Unisys Patent on LZW compression that emerged in the mid 1990s.

PNGs are not restricted to the 256 color limitation of GIF files, support better transparency options and have better compression but do not support the multiple frames and simple animation that GIF files have.

Overall though PNG are widely supported, GIF is still the most popular.

Glossary:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Examples: I save my image and logo files as PNG.

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