Comment 0 for bug 1239260

If you download an image off say, Wikipedia, it's probably a .png. When this comes to your computer and you open it with eog, by default it will have a horrible checkered pattern on it (because the background for these images is 'transparent') and this checkered pattern makes things totally unreadable (e.g. chemistry reaction mechanisms).

The solution is to view the image with eog and go to Edit -> Preferences and set the transparent parts to be a custom colour (white) to have a white background.

I propose that by default, the transparent parts should be set to appear white so images get a nice, standard white background which makes things LEGIBLE rather than the current checkered style which isn't helping anyone.

(What a nightmare for users trying to open a PNG and being met by a checkered pattern that they swear wasn't there when they downloaded it. I went through quite some time wondering if i should convert the PNG to another format like SVG to get rid of it, but the problem is on the image viewing end, not the image itself. I shudder to think how many people have hit this problem but not known what to do and given up.)