Chrome 59 will bring support for animated PNGs without extensions

Last week, Google released Chrome 58, the latest stable version of its hugely popular web browser. Version 59 is now in the Dev Channel ahead of its general rollout, and the company has now confirmed that it will include native support for animated PNG files.

PNG files are similar to GIFs in supporting transparency, but while animated GIFs are now ubiquitous, animated PNG (or APNG) files are still relatively uncommon. Unlike GIFs, APNG files support both 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency.

This is a GIF representing a person who's extremely excited about animated PNGs.

As 9to5Google reports, an enquiry on Google's Chromium bug reporting site was met with a response from a Google employee that confirmed upcoming support for APNG in the next version of the browser. One user asked: "Does this mean that Chrome will now have full apng support without extensions?" The response: "Yes, Chrome 59 animates animated PNGs without require any sort of browser extensions."

Some browsers, such as Firefox, have included APNG support for some time, and Apple supports APNG in iMessage apps on iOS 10 too.

Source: 9to5Google