Many years ago when the first versions of Firefox came out and were already supporting transparency with PNG images, IE was still behind in the game (what's new?). It wasn't until IE7 (correct me if I am wrong) that transparency was finally (somewhat) supported in IE.

 

Today we are on IE8, and it is often claimed that IE now fully supports alpha transparency with PNGs. At first glance, with certain generic images, this may seem like the case, but the more you use PNGs, the more you will realize, IE still hasn't got it right.

 

The two images that are included show how IE8 (8.0.7600.16385 - to be exact) and Chrome5 (5.0.375.99 - to be exact) render alpha transparency in PNG images when partial opacity is applied using CSS.

 

Notice how IE still doesn't do this properly, by creating a solid, unappealing matte around the edges of the image. In Chrome you can see how the images are perfectly blended to their respective backgrounds without any such solid and rough edges.

 

While I only used Chrome for the sake of comparison, the reality is that Firefox, Opera and Safari also do render this properly.

 

So regardless of what Microsoft wants to tell us, or what many misinformed webdevelopers would like to believe, IE8 *still* has issues with alpha-transparency with PNG images, and as such, I don't think it's fitting to say that IE supports transparency with PNGs quite yet, since it all falls apart when you apply opacity to the images in CSS.

 

In closing: what gives Microsoft? I feel like I've been waiting for complete PNG support for more than 5 years now, and almost the entire time I keep getting told "it's all already there", but that is a load of hogwash, and these comparison shots demonstrate that very clearly.