One feature that got little to no press at the time of launch of Firefox 3 is a new animated Web graphic format. Until now, Web designers had two options, Flash and animated GIF format. However, users of Firefox 3 have another format available to them, Animated PNG format(APNG). What’s the advantage of APNG? For starters, animated GIF files are limited to 256 colors and do not support partially transparent pixels. APNG supports a full color spectrum, just as normal JPG and PNG files do. It also supports full or partially transparent pixes. Unfortunately, because it’s not a Web standard just yet, it’s only available to Firefox 3 users. The Firefox logo above is animated, the fox is spinning around a stationary globe, but you’ll only see it in Firefox 3. In order to create APNG images, you’ll need Firefox 3 and the APNG Editor extension. The APNG Editor not only allows you to create APNG images, but you can also edit animated .gif images, frame-by-frame. The editor offers a simple set of options and looks a lot like the animation panel in Photoshop. I absolutely hate the constraints placed on me by the GIF format. It’s just so restrictive. I hope the APNG format takes off and gains a lot of popularity, because it’s certainly a lot more flexible. You can read more about the Animated PNG format at the Mozilla Web site, and download the APNG Edit extension here.