Short for
Portable Network Graphics, and pronounced
ping, a new
bit-mapped graphics format similar to
GIF. In fact, PNG was approved as a standard by the World Wide Web consortium to replace GIF because GIF uses a patented
data compression algorithm called
LZW. In contrast, PNG is completely patent- and license-free. The most recent versions of
Netscape Navigator and
Microsoft Internet Explorer now support PNG.
Also see JPG vs. GIF vs. PNG in the Did You Know . . . ? section of Webopedia.