Browser Test, Please Ignore

[Peppermint Pig]

... I told you to ignore this thread, but nooo, you had to look inside and see what was going on! Curiosity... Tisk! 

Several browsers for OSX have been creating a blurring (anti aliasing filter) effect with zoomed images. Safari, Firefox, and SeaMonkey are documented as having this issue, but their PC counterparts, if they have one, display proper, crisp images... Mozilla 1.7.5 for OSX does not have this problem, and it is a slightly older browser. Therefore it's probably some change in method that is causing this (graphics/rendering library issue). For OSX users, his is completely unacceptable, and suggests a trend in browser development of a cosmetic nature, where pages are built to be zoomed to fit a user's screen resolution, and bitmap images are being "corrected". This is only a theory, however.

Firefox sports a feature that shrinks to fit the loading of  individual images if they exceed your window sizewhich is acceptable, but blurred zooms when images are scaled at factors of their original size are inappropriate when precision of detail is at stake.

Here is a test image, saved to various formats to rule out any inconsistencies between them (none have been found so far).

Click to Zoom:

Actual Size BMP
Zoom (script) BMP
More Zoom (script) BMP
Actual Size PNG
Zoom (script) PNG
More Zoom (script) PNG
Actual Size GIF
Zoom (script) GIF
More Zoom (script) GIF

[Peppermint Pig]

RESULTS:

http://virtual.dyc.edu/~peppermint/temporary/mozilla_1.7.5_osx.png

http://virtual.dyc.edu/~peppermint/temporary/seamonkey_1.0.5_osx.png

[Filax_666]

Don't know if I should be replying to this...

Anyway, I've had that problem before, but it seems that, if use an earlier version of Firefox (dunno what's the latest, I think I've got 1.0.7), it doesn't happen. WIth Safari, the problem still exists - plus, the images overlap eachother. Tell me if you want a screenshot.

[Feron]

Safari auto-blurs mine - i can still recognise individual pixels though so im not to bothered.

Perhaps it has something to do with the mac and screen - i remeber it not blurring on my G3, but it does on this 20".

[Peppermint Pig]

I am told that this is the future of web browsers. They will be interpolating zoomed images by default. Browser apps on OSX take advantage of quartz I believe. They justify the change by saying that most people would appreciate it. The hope is that they will include either a css behavior for it, or it's an option in a preference pane.

This means that all of you PC users will be experiencing this effect when your browsers adopt the latest standards. OSX is currently a little ahead in this arena.

Sure Filax, screenshots help. Your old browser is comparable to my old mozilla, and they have no problems.

It would suck if we had to resort to using old browsers just to visit pixelation. On the positive side, SeaMonkey reintroduced the COPY function for copying images from the browser, so at least I can go into Photoshop and zoom things if I need to. I can live with the change, but it is disturbing that they're not taking into account the need for non-interpolated images for some web applications. They say they want to do it because computers have the power/resources to do it, but just as well I know that people will be using this added power to make javascript video games right in the web browser, and they would appreciate non-interpolating (non-blurring) sprites if they choose to render them at 2x or greater.

Here's a bug report related to the change. You can see someone in a similar situation. Notice the status RESOLVED & WONTFIX.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321548

[Feron]

It would suck if we had to resort to using old browsers just to visit pixelation. On the positive side, SeaMonkey reintroduced the COPY function for copying images from the browser, so at least I can go into Photoshop and zoom things if I need to.

ummm. you can do this with any browser.

[Peppermint Pig]

Sorry, should have mentioned that it was an isolated case, versus something that affects everyone, like this blur may do. At one time, Mozilla restricted this feature, and now it's available again in SeaMonkey.

[Gil]

What happens to gifs with transparency? Can I get a screenshot of that?

[Feron]

gifs with transparency have always been fine on mac.  Png alpha transparency also works perfect - IE is the one with transparency problems, but then again it is made by M$

[Gil]

That's not what I asked...
I asked if they blurred...

I kinda remember the blurring from the last project I did on Mac, but I can't remember how it handled transparency blurring...