What is GIF?
GIF is thirty-eight years old and refuses to die, because it animates and everything opens it. The cost is its palette: 256 colours per frame, so photographs come out visibly banded. Transparency is on-or-off per pixel, with no partial opacity.
What is PNG?
PNG is the web's lossless image format: compression that never degrades the picture, and a real alpha channel for transparency. It is the right choice for screenshots, logos, line art and anything with sharp edges or text.