MNG-supporting Browsers

Browsers with MNG Support

Even more so than PNG, a large part of MNG's design was focused on the Web, particularly since animated GIFs became so popular (despite their inefficiencies). Like PNG, MNG supports partial transparency, both palette and truecolor modes, and good compression; like GIF, it supports animations. Unlike either, it has a concept of object-based (or sprite-based) animation, which allows many common forms of animation to be compressed much better than GIF. It also supports JPEG compression, with or without transparency, via its JNG subset.

This page lists standard 2D browsers; as of late 2002, there are still no MNG-supporting 3D applications, VRML or otherwise. All known MNG-supporting browsers are listed here. However, Greg doesn't always hear about new ones right away, so if you don't see something here, also check Gerard Juyn's MNG application pages, in particular these:

MNG-supporting web browsers
MNG plug-ins, components and controls for browsers and other apps
Japanese MNG-supporting applications (and advocacy sites)

As with the other applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known. But if a link is broken, check the location and see if the page moved or if an updated version is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics).

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

AWeb [Yvon Rozijn, AWeb developers] (Amiga) - any version(?) via a JNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page); first-frame-only MNG support; read-only; does not require MUI; freeware (APL) with C source (CVS) as of 8 June 2002.
Internet Explorer - see MNG4IE below
J-PHONE packet-enabled handsets [J-PHONE] (embedded) - all 2002+ versions? read-only; commercial. (These are Japanese cell phones with color displays and the ability to display PNG and JPEG images, MNG animations, sound clips, and possibly streaming video. High-end examples include the J-SA51 and J-SA52 handsets with embedded digital cameras. Check Babelfish for an English translation of the technical/compatibility page above.)
Konqueror [KDE developers] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read-only; requires Qt 2.2.0 or later, libmng, libjpeg and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This was originally a file manager, kfm, with integrated web-browsing capabilities, but it has since grown into a complete web browser and components-based file viewer.)
mMosaic [Winfried Szukalski / Dauphin Gilles / NCSA X Mosaic Team] (Unix/X) - version 3.8.13(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; uses libmng, libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is an enhanced version of NCSA X Mosaic 2.7b4, extended by Gilles to support tables, Java applets, etc., and later by Szukalski to include MNG/JNG support. Development ended in February 2004 with version 3.8.22.)
MNG4IE [Jason Summers] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; JNG support; requires libmng, libjpeg, zlib, and optionally lcms; freeware (zlib/libpng) with source. (This is a MNG/JNG ActiveX control for Internet Explorer. See also MNGPLG below.)
MNGPLG [Jason Summers] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; JNG support; requires libmng, libjpeg, and zlib; freeware (zlib/libpng) with source. (This is a MNG/JNG plug-in for Netscape Navigator, now included in the libmng source distribution. A Japanese port by SATO "COCKY" Akihiro is also available. See also MNG4IE above.)
MNG Plug-in [Warwick Allison] (Linux/Qt) - all versions; read-only; JNG support; requires libmng, libjpeg, and zlib; freeware (QPL) with source. (This is a MNG/JNG plug-in for Netscape Navigator. Though building it requires the Qt GUI toolkit for X, the precompiled binary is statically linked and therefore works on any glibc-based Linux/X system. The sources currently can be found only within the Qt 2.x releases for Unix/X11 [qt-x11-2.x.x.tar.gz] under extensions/nsplugin/examples/movies/.)
Mozilla [mozilla.org, Netscape Communications] (Unix/X, Win32, Macintosh, BeOS, etc.) - versions from 12 June 2000 through 23 March 2001 and from 17 December 2001 through 3 June 2003 (in CVS, anyway; 0.9.7 release of 21 December 2001 did not support MNG, but 0.9.8 through 1.4.x did, while versions 1.5 and later once again do not except via Christian Biesinger's MNG XPI [see also the MNGzilla page]); read-only; JNG support; full alpha support; full gamma support (but not for other image types, nor for HTML or CSS colors--see bug 53597); no chromaticity or ICC profile support (bug 44866); uses libmng, libjpeg, libpng and zlib; freeware (NPL/MPL/GPL) with source. (This is the mostly-rewritten-from-scratch code base on which Netscape Navigator 6.0 was based.)
Navigator [Netscape Communications] (Unix/X, Win32, Macintosh) - versions 6.0, 6.01, and 7.0 and later (see Mozilla bug 66976 for info on lack of support in 6.1 and 6.2), or older versions with Jason Summers' MNGPLG (Win32) or Warwick Allison's MNG Plug-in (Linux/Qt); read-only; JNG support; alpha support, but not for JNG (uses random-dithered binary transparency that "blinks" to a random-colored mess in areas of partial transparency, and doesn't display JNGs with JPEG alpha channels [JDAA chunk] at all); full gamma support (but not for other image types, nor for HTML or CSS colors); no chromaticity or ICC profile support; uses libmng, libjpeg, libpng and zlib; freeware. (Versions 6.0 and later are based on the open-source Mozilla but differ in a number of ways. The MNG code in 6.0 dates from 8 August 2000 and therefore retained a number of bugs that were fixed in Mozilla shortly thereafter; these were fixed in 6.01. 7.0 appears to be relatively solid so far.)
NetFront [ACCESS] (PocketPC, Linux?) - version 3.0 and later; uses libpng and zlib; read-only; commercial. (This is an embedded web browser for PDAs, 2.5G and 3G cell phones, and other "Internet appliances." PNG and MNG support appear to be optional features, at least for the cell-phone versions.)
Voyager [VaporWare] (Amiga) - all versions(?) with a JNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page); first-frame-only MNG support; read-only; requires MUI; uses libpng and zlib; commercial / shareware. (Also known as MindWalker in the Amiga Technologies Surfer Pack. Version 2.7 introduced native PNG support and was known as VoyagerNG; version 3.x is known as V³.)
WebC [EBS] (embedded, Win32) - version 2.4.3 and later; read-only; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; commercial (royalty-free) with C source.

Here are some related MNG pages at this site:

Last modified 14 March 2009.