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Use PNGs instead of GIFs for standard icons

1 Description

ILIAS should use PNGs instead of GIFs for the standard icons. The ilUtil::getImagePath should first look for corresponding ".png" files, if the filename ends on ".gif" and prefer the PNGs. Matthias will replace the file in the delos skin.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Release 4.3
• Funding: Funded by ILIAS-Verein, Leifos
• Development: Feature is to be developed by ILIAS-Verein, Leifos

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Matthias Kunkel

4 Discussion

JF 19 Mar 2012: We highly appriciate this improvement.

Matthias Kunkel, 16 May 2012: Since a long time it is possible to substitute icons of a category (or a course...) by customised icons. PNG has always been accepted as format. But ILIAS has problems with transparency. Will this be solved with this feature, too?

Matthias Kunkel, 08 July 2012: Which is the preferred png format? PNG-8 or PNG-24? I guess PNG-24 is supporting transperency much better, doesn't it?

5 Implementation

All gifs have been removed from the directories

• templates/default/images
• templates/default/images/scorm
• templates/default/images/browser

The code has been changed accordingly. Due to performance reasons, ILIAS only looks for .png files now. If you created any skins in the past, that used their own icons, please convert them to png. There are lots of tools, that do this for whole directories in one, e.g. Imagemagick "mogrify -format png *.gif".

Please note that the conversion to png did not give them transparent edges automatically. We still must replace the default icons with png files that work on all kinds of backgrounds.