Thanks to a few readers’ suggestions, I stripped the gamma information out of the PNG files, and now they look spiffy, even in IE. I’ve also been informed of a few server-side fixes that would make PNG alpha transparency work, but I’m going to shy away from that for now. No need to overtax the server. Anyhow, by stripping out the gamma info and crushing the PNGs as much as possible, the total image data count for the front page goes from 53kb to 37kb (not couting the comic and various ads, of course). That’s not too shabby at all. :) Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

My hatred of Internet Explorer has risen to a new plateau. I hate it for the usual reasons, of course… the slowness and the security holes… but for some reason, IE sees a PNG file and goes “Hmm… I wonder what this is. Oh, hell with it. I’ll make it a little bit darker.” I was trying to stick to pure PNG for the new layout, but when I load the bugger up in IE, all the blue had a darker hue to it than it was supposed to. Load it in FireFox and Netscape, and it works fine. I’d say “screw it”, but 75% of you guys use that horrid beast of a browser. I have to make it work in IE, unfortunately. I wish MS would get off their butts and actually make their browser compliant with a bunch of the new standards. To be able to use transparent PNGs without worrying about them not showing up properly would be BLISS. Pure, unadulterared bliss.

Oh well. GIFs it is, I suppose.