Why PNG is a force for evil

PNG images are a thing of beauty. Alpha transparency and properly antialiased curves mean that designers can mix and match beautiful images, overlaying them and creating splendid collages, striking break-outs and visual treats a-plenty. We can now also use images with transparent backgrounds with impunity, safe in the knowledge that we will not be left with a nasty bounding box of background colour and we do not have to worry.

Therein lies the root of the problem: "we don't have to worry". So the question is: where does "not have to worry" end, and "don't care" laziness begin? It's the same with Windoze (and Mac OS). I use the corrupted spelling there not to discredit an excellent OS (notwithstanding that Vista hump), but rather because we are lulled into a false sense of security, thinking "oh, Windows will take care of that". We are encouraged with slick interfaces and very clever programming to "not worry" about so much on our computers that we are beginning to look at them as black boxes, without any understanding of the technology. 

I cannot help but feel that just because somebody creates a tool that makes life easier for us, does not mean that we should shut down our brains. Understanding is important. Computers are complex tools and web design is a complex and evolving practice, and with every new development, there are ramifications. Maybe it will be filesize. Maybe it will be poor format choice. Maybe the creation of a simple to make web page will result in really horrible, horrible code. (Frontpage, anyone?)

I too often see web pages bearing images of massive file size where the only gain has been five minutes work in Photoshop. If website speed is a concern for you, first try making your site without PNGs. Make the effort and see if you can reclaim some of the glory days of the early web, when designers would use every trick in the arsenal to eke out every shred of goodness from each hard fought kilobyte. 

Google cares a lot about speed, and so should we.