bmp's v. jpg's

[Bacon Bits]

several years ago, when I started web site development, I remember the file extension *.bmp didn't work on the internet. Yet, I come back years later, and they seem to work fine. This is fishy, since I haven't heard from anywhere that they should work, yet they do. Does using *.bmp's rather than *.jpg's or *.gif's have any disadvantages?

[Zachery]

Very much so... bmps are very large files and cannot be compressed well, bmps have probaly always worked they were just so large your browser timed out.

You should use jpgs or gifs and pngs when possible

[Cloud Strife]

Very much so... bmps are very large files and cannot be compressed well, bmps have probaly always worked they were just so large your browser timed out.

You should use jpgs or gifs and pngs when possible

I like PNG

[Bacon Bits]

in that case, does anyone know of a good (and free) image converter?

[Zachery]

GIMP and cheep but not free Photoshop Elements

[Jake Bunce]

Just don't use alpha transparency on PNGs because IE doesn't support it well at all. It's too bad really.