MNG

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For other uses, see MNG (disambiguation).

Multiple-image Network Graphics
File extension:	`.mng`
MIME type:	`video/x-mng (unofficial)`
Type of format:	computer animation
Container for:	PNG, JNG
Extended from:	PNG

Multiple-image Network Graphics (MNG) (IPA pronunciation: /mɪŋ/) is a public graphics file format for animated images.

MNG is closely related to the PNG image format. When PNG development started in early 1995, developers decided not to incorporate support for animation, not least of all because this feature of GIF was seldom used at the time. However, work soon started on MNG as an animation-supporting version of PNG. Version 1.0 of the MNG specification was released on January 31, 2001.

1 Software that supports MNG
2 Technical details
3 Alternatives
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Software that supports MNG

MNG is currently not as widely supported as PNG. Nonetheless, Konqueror has native MNG support, and MNG plugins are available for most other web browsers. Mozilla browsers and some of Netscape 7.x releases included native support for MNG until the code was removed in 2003 due to code size and little actual usage^[1], causing a huge outcry^[2]. Neither Internet Explorer or Safari currently support MNG. Recent Sony Ericsson phones support MNG files in their themes.

The MNG developers hope that in time MNG will begin to replace GIF for animated images on the World Wide Web, just as PNG has already begun to do for still images.^[3]

[edit] Technical details

The structure of MNG files is essentially the same as that of PNG files, differing only in the slightly different signature (8A 4D 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A in hexadecimal) and the use of a much greater variety of chunks to support all the animation features that it provides. Images to be used in the animation are stored in the MNG file as encapsulated PNG or JNG images.

Two versions of MNG of reduced complexity are also defined: MNG-LC (low complexity) and MNG-VLC (very low complexity). These allow applications to include some level of MNG support without having to implement the entire MNG specification, just as the SVG standard offers the "SVG Basic" and "SVG Tiny" subsets.

MNG does not yet have a registered MIME media type, but video/x-mng or image/x-mng can be used. MNG animations may be included in HTML pages using the <object> tag.

MNG can either be lossy or lossless, depending whether the frames are encoded in PNG (lossless) or JNG (lossy).

[edit] Alternatives

GIF is often used. APNG is proposed as an alternative to MNG. Yet another alternative would be using animated SVG images with embedded PNG or JPEG graphics.