I hope there will be more animated formats like GIF (which are supported by browsers)... and I don't mention flash here since that's more of a multimedia format which a bit of user interface aspects.

@Rikusu:
Yes, please.

In short (just typed from memory):
- JPEG: lossy, good for photos. (Screen 12 images like the one mentioned have a lot of colours and smooth transitions, so JPEG might be not so bad.) 24 bit colour, or 8 bit grey. Well supported for the web. Does not support transparency.
- GIF: not lossy, but has only 256 colours (in a palette). Compression is done via run-lenght encoding or LZW (of which the patent has now expired, AFAIK). Don't use this, it's obsolete and reduces your color depth a lot. Maybe for animations you want to use it, as it is widely supported on the web. Not sure about transparency.
- PNG: not lossy, very versatile, supports several compression techniques and color depths. Very good transparency support. Supported in most browsers, but transparency is broken in some IE versions. There's also a derived format for animations called MNG, but that one is not very popular yet (but Bifi: there you are).
- TIFF: a container format. Can contain about any type of image in many many compression schemes. Very popular for professional purposes. Example: fax is TIFF with Group4 compression. Some photo cameras also use it if you want losslessly compressed output.
- BMP: completely obsolete format invented in the dark ages. Mostly used without compression, so gives huge files. 24 bit only, no transparency. Originates from the dark ages. DON'T USE

These are the most important ones. If you want to support one format, support PNG
For all these formats there are very good free libraries available.

For more information, check the respective pages on wikipedia.org.

So... here you are the splash screen in png
http://personales.ya.com/lamancha/temp/Laydock2.png

[back to topic]

What about the poll?

[/back to topic]

How did you create the PNG?

Anyway, as I said: the fuzzyness is not caused by strong JPEG compression, but by screen 12.

Just opening blueMSX screenshot BMP with Photoshop and "Save as PNG", no interlaced.

Ehm... ok, it could be the blueMSX options "vertical stretch" and "horizontal stretch", let me disable these options, video emulation = monitor, machine emulation=MSX2+ (FS-AWSX1)

Here is the result...
http://personales.ya.com/lamancha/temp/Laydock2b.png

I think is the same fuzzy...

Quote:

- GIF: not lossy, but has only 256 colours (in a palette). Compression is done via run-lenght encoding or LZW (of which the patent has now expired, AFAIK). Don't use this, it's obsolete and reduces your color depth a lot. Maybe for animations you want to use it, as it is widely supported on the web. Not sure about transparency.

GIF89a supports transparancy. One of the 256 colors in the palette can be made transparent. Note that the palette entry still contains a color value and a program that does not support GIF-transparency will show that color instead.

Quote:

- PNG: not lossy, very versatile, supports several compression techniques and color depths. Very good transparency support. Supported in most browsers, but transparency is broken in some IE

'some'? Make that 'all, with an occasional exception'! In short IE sucks like a vacuum cleaner, is obsolete and should be avoided like the plague.

stop calling names, niles. thank you.

Just don't take it personally, ro

Quote:

stop calling names, niles. thank you.

I don't know what you want to say.....

ro was (is?) part of a group called Fuzzy Logic, which is what he is hinting at, I guess...

http://www.thefuzz.nl/ <- ro

manuel, I know about MNG... it's not supported by browsers... yet...

Hey! I didn't know this fuzzy thing thanks for the info Sonic_aka_T

then it's better "don't mention the devil" right?

Quote:

then it's better "don't mention the devil" right?

well, it's the same fuzzy