Convert PNGs to CSS Gradients with pngtocss

CSS gradients are a hot topic right now and why shouldn't they be? CSS gradients save time by not making you create an image, they save a request to that image, and the code to create them is smaller than the image's file size.  If you've been using image-based gradients and are looking to move your web apps to CSS-based gradients, there's a great new project aimed at automating PNG gradients into CSS gradients called pngtocss.  pngtocss is easy to obtain, configure, and use!

Download and Configuration

The pngtocss project is hosted on GitHub, for your forking pleasure.  You can go the GitHub and download a zip or simply clone the project to your machine:

git clone https://github.com/bluesmoon/pngtocss.git

One you've cloned the repo, navigate to the src directory where you'll find a pngtocss.c file, which you'll have to make. Before making pngtocss, you must confirm that your system has the zlib and libpng libraries installed.  I use MacPorts so I typed:

sudo port install zlib

sudo port install libpng

With those two libraries present, I was ready to make:

make pngtocss.c

If everything installed as it should have, you're ready to start converting PNG gradients to CSS gradients!  To convert your PNG gradient images into CSS gradients, run the following command:

#pngtocss {file}
pngtocss mypng.png

#output:
.mypng {
	background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #02469a, #bcf3cb);
	background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#02469a), to(#bcf3cb));
	background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #02469a, #bcf3cb);
	background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, #02469a, #bcf3cb);
	background-image: linear-gradient(top, #02469a, #bcf3cb);
}

That's it!  Pretty sweet!  Like any early project, however, pngtocss isn't perfect and it doesn't support radial gradients yet. pngtocss is, however, a promising start and is an excellent utility for helping developers move from images to CSS.  Cheers to Phillip Tellis for creating this awesome utility!