10 ms·

Firefox to support Google's WebP image format for a faster web

161 points by shdon 8y ago

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
That's surprising. I was under the impression that it was already supported since they support WebM. The Wikipedia article [0] says they started evaluating adding support in 2016. Following the source links to this bug report [1]. From a quick glance at the discussion there, it's not obvious to me that they've settled on adding in WebP support. What we need is buy-in from Apple. Although I'd be much more excited about them adding WebM support so we can finally drive the last nail in the GIF coffin. Does anyone know why they pulled it out? If I had to take a shot in the dark, maybe it doesn't perform well on mobile or it consumes too much power? Maybe this is a dumb question, but why will we be supporting both WebM and animated WebP? According to the Wikipedia article, WebP also has animation support.... But isn't that kinda redundant? Do they solve different problems? You can just create WebM containers without an audio stream. While we're on the subject of adding new image formats to the web, does anyone know if there's any interest in adding FLIF support [2]? When it came out it seemed much more interesting to me, but it looks like it never picked up steam. As an aside, can I just say fuck CNET? Here they used a shitty linking practice which I always find incredibly annoying. Instead of linking to primary sources, they add some useless tag links along with references to old CNET articles. How about linking to the relevant bug reports, asshole? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Image_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Image_Format
- clear_dg 8y ago
  > why will we be supporting both WebM and animated WebP? From: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq (Why not simply support WebM in <img>?) WebM uses more memory, it is less widely supported, uses more resources when playing, and is currently less efficient compression-wise than WebP. About FLIF, I was recently checking it and it's indeed a very interesting format. Notably because it can be used on any type of image. I assume it hasn't pickep up steam because it doesn't have the backing of any big sponsor. Google is pushing WebP, and introducing another format at this time is probably not worth it.
  - klodolph 8y ago
    FLIF is interesting, yes, but after doing some more research into it I came to the conclusion it doesn't hold any promise as an image format for the web. The progressive streaming is a cool trick, but if you actually use the progressive stream to embed lossy images in your web page, you end up with lower quality than if you had just used JPEG in the first place, never mind something newer. The difference was pretty stark.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  CNET is an all around terrible experience.
nwah1 8y ago
Strange to cave so late in the game with AVIF right around the corner. This article really doesn't explain why.
- bscphil 8y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, while AVIF may be "right around the corner", it's still quite a way off relative to the speed of technological advances. Unless I'm mistaken AV1 is very far from finalized or being a realistic option for the web, and as AVIF will effectively just be a still-image subset of AV1 it's going to take some time as well. (I'm still very excited about it, however.) I suspect they might be motivated by the rapid way in which HEIF seems to be taking over. My understanding is that comparatively, the patent situation of WebP is much better. If you're a company concerned about software patents on the web, it might suddenly seem that throwing your weight behind WebP as a way of avoiding the proliferation of HEIF is worthwhile.
  - cornstalks 8y ago
    > Unless I'm mistaken AV1 is very far from finalized AV1 is finalized: https://aomedia.org/av1-features/get-started/ https://aomedia.org/av1-features/get-started/ I think there are a couple bugs and contradictions between the spec and reference implementation that are being ironed out, but the bitstream is now frozen.
    - rjsw 8y ago
      The copy of Firefox that I'm using to type this has the AV1 library linked to it (via ffmpeg).
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    AV1 is enabled for video in the next release of Chrome, and the current release of Firefox has it behind a flag IIRC. The spec has been finalized since early this year, and the results are stunning: You can produce recognizable, sometimes perfectly passable, images at around one tenth of a bit per pixel. Try the "clovisfest" test image here[0], with the most recent AV1 snapshot on the right, and MOZJPEG (the most advanced JPEG encoder on the market, AFAIK) on the left, with both set to the "Tiny" target bitrate (0.1bpp). Smooth, continuous grades look hideous on JPEG up to pretty high bitrates, and JPEG never quite reproduces hard edges or sharp specks properly; AV1 excels at both of these. [0]: Image formats comparison <https://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/#clovisfest&jpg=t&webm=t> https://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/#clovis...
hermanradtke 8y ago
Great, but we really need Safari to support WebP since that is the only option for iOS mobile devices.
- tomnipotent 8y ago
  My business is 80% mobile traffic, of which 80% is iOS. It feels a lot like the old IE6 days, only (fortunately) less painful.
  - realusername 8y ago
    Yeah I confirm, I spend so much time fixing bugs for IE11 and Safari mobile.
    - kkarakk 8y ago
      similar market forces at play - apple users use safari coz it is the default browser so you have to develop for safari first not web first just like ms wanted you to develop for IE first not web first.
      - mcintyre1994 8y ago
        It's actually the only browser engine on iOS, all the third party ones are just skins on it with convenience features like syncing with their desktop counterparts.
        solarkraft 8y ago
        ... For some reason. Because Apple. This is one of the things keeping me from taking them seriously.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      I recall how much joy I felt when my company's IT retired IE 7 and force-upgraded everyone to IE 8. So much polyfills and crutches that we could get rid of... (It was about the same, to a lesser extent, when moving the minimum requirement up to IE 9. That's the point where I stopped thinking about browser support.)
gojomo 8y ago
To my eyes, Fabrice Bellard's HEVC-based 'BPG' looks even better at the same sizes, so I'd love to see it more widely supported, too. See: https://bellard.org/bpg/ https://bellard.org/bpg/
- out_of_protocol 8y ago
  ... except you need to pay loads of money for the (edit: HEVC) license
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Why? The "licensing" information at the bottom of the page makes it seem like it's open source?
    - Youden 8y ago
      Because it's based on HEVC. HEVC patents have a very complex (and expensive) licensing situation right now.
    - okket 8y ago
      Open Source does mean it is free of patents.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
        Does not mean it is free of patents.
        okket 8y ago
        Oops, right. I really thought I wrote this. Sorry.
        yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
        Yeah, I assumed it was just a typo, but I figured we wanted to be absolutely clear here.
zuzun 8y ago
WebP is reasonably fast, this can't be said about the other image formats. I tested WebP, FLIF and BPG when I was looking for a PNG alternative and WebP seemed to be the best choice all-around. The only downside of WebP is that it doesn't work with images larger than 16383 pixels in width or height.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- colejohnson66 8y ago
  2^14 pixels in both directions with 4 bytes per pixel (ARGB) puts the pixel data at a maximum size of 2^30 bytes. Just barely enough to be indexed using a 32-bit integer (even a signed one if you want)
  - flohofwoe 8y ago
    Looks like WebP uses RIFF data chunks [1] (which look a lot like the old Amiga IFF file format), and the size of such a chunk is a 32-bit integer. Besides, 16k width/height ought to be enough for anyone ;) [1] https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container
    - dllu 8y ago
      I take photos of trains [1] and regularly run into file format limitations as the photos can easily reach hundreds of thousands of pixels wide. Besides, modern cameras such as the Sony a7R II are already producing photos 8000 px wide, and the upcoming 100 megapixel cameras such as the Fujifilm will do 12000 px wide images. It's very easy to hit the limit if you're planning to shoot any panoramas. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu
      - jopsen 8y ago
        If the raw size is approaching 4GB maybe it's fair to split the image.. Anyways, webp is for websites not cameras..
Boulth 8y ago
Are there any technical details on that? For example would Firefox send Accept headers with image/webp?
- CorpusCalcium 8y ago
  It would essentially have to, in order to support WebP as the web uses it.
astrange 8y ago
That's too bad. WebP was a bad idea released several years too early, now it's stuck with VP8 and the only color format is 8-bit 4:2:0 which is just not good enough. Please don't use it.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  It's better than JPEG and PNG for most uses, with smaller image sizes. Even 4:2:0 is better than the sRGB usually used in PNG. I'd rather have this now than wait another few years for a few niche usecases (where TIFF can still be used)
  - astrange 8y ago
    You can use AV1 or HEIF right now, and they're actually modern formats. > Even 4:2:0 is better than the sRGB usually used in PNG. Better for what? Not for wide-color photographs or any kind of colored text, that's for sure.
    - devwastaken 8y ago
      Afaik there is no av1 or heif browser implementations. Theres far less efficient polyfills for heif that are poor on large images.
      - astrange 8y ago
        HEIF works in Safari, and I believe Android will have it soon if it doesn't already. As for AV1, browsers can add it anytime they want…
        ValentineC 8y ago
        Looking at CanIUse [1][2], it seems like the HEIF support is in macOS itself, and not the Safari browser. I wouldn't be surprised if the Windows version of Safari didn't support it. [1] https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif [2] https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/3767 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/3767
vladdanilov 8y ago
WebP lossy and WebP lossless often get mixed up. They are substantially different. While the former is mostly just outdated VP8 4:2:0, it is fast and more pleasing to the eye than JPEG at low quality and more practical there, given it has transparency. The latter is a pretty good option for ARGB images offering 25% improvement over PNG [1], and 20-40% on top of that with near-lossless compression. [1] https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_bitstream_specification https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_...
- BurningCycles 8y ago
  Not only that, but it's also MUCH faster than PNG in both decoding and encoding. I use it for all images I store as lossless.
dao- 8y ago
People point out that WebP isn't ideal, that there are better alternatives etc. All that may be true, but the most relevant factor here is Google and Microsoft backing WebP. Google has the power to push through its own inventions due to Chrome's market share. If you want less of that, use Firefox. Meanwhile, Mozilla hasn't given up on better formats, as the article points out.
- maaaats 8y ago
  While I like a lot of the new capabilities of the web, I sometimes feel like it's Google strong-arming them into existence, and the rest has to follow.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Which makes Google Chrome a modern day IE. They push basically proprietary nonsense into the web that eventually gets scrapped or forced into being an open spec at which point its harder to redefine since it became a "works on my browser" implementation.
    - izacus 8y ago
      Except that the problem with IE was stagnation in era of IE6, not new standards backed by patent free and open source libraries.
      - toyg 8y ago
        The original problem with IE was its implementation of early CSS drafts - an open standard with specs. They just picked the “wrong” version of such specs and pushed it with their commercial strength. Everyone else was then caught between the choice of implementing the real (better) spec, or lose compatibility with IE. Similarly, Google now picks the standards it likes, and everyone else is caught between the choice of investing in those or lose compatibility with Chrome. Not much of a difference.
        8y ago
wooptoo 8y ago
Good to see Firefox join the party, even tough it's 4 years late. Serving multiple content types based on the http accept header sent by the browser is easy to setup. [1] So Chrome and Firefox users can benefit from the better webp compression while Safari and IE can stick to jpeg. [1] https://wooptoo.com/blog/serving-webp-today/ https://wooptoo.com/blog/serving-webp-today/
glenrivard 8y ago
This is fantastic to see. I hope Firefox will also isolate sites for better Spectre protection like Google did with Chrome. Takes more RAM but the added protection, IMO, is well worth it. Had heard they are working on it. But had not heard a date?
tootie 8y ago
Have browsers started deprecating any image formats to decrease bloat?
- kardos 8y ago
  Would that meaningfully reduce bloat?
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  I'd like to see the opposite; Browsers having support for more image formats, especially the legacy ones from 20+ years ago (PCX, ART, ILBM, MAC etc.). That way interesting and useful imagery from days gone by aren't lost forever when the few remaining decoders never get ported to newer operating systems.
xvilka 8y ago
People compare it to JPG or PNG. I think the main point is for deprecating GIFs, with their poor quality and very slow processing.
writepub 8y ago
Mobile web consumption is now the majority of web engagement. Given that, iOS Safari's reluctance speaks volumes. I bet this has anything to do with technology, and more with Apple's business rivalry with the open web. Given how iOS Safari is the least standards compliant browser of our time (other than the now defunct IE), I'm surprised they even implemented webassembly & webRtc (they didn't implement the data channel)
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  webRtc (they didn't implement the data channel) That is not correct. I've used WebRTC data channels myself on iOS and it works fine.
  - writepub 8y ago
    Can you link to a WebRTC Data Channel URL that works on iOS Safari? Here's a simple WebRTC DataChannel demo that doesn't work on iOS 12.0 Safari https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/datachannel/basic/ https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/datachannel/bas...
    - matthewmacleod 8y ago
      I'm afraid not – none of the available demos seem to work, but I don't know why that would be the case. All I can say is that I worked with the technology pretty extensively, and was absolutely able to use a data channel between Chrome and Safari 11 on both desktop and mobile without any issues.
      - writepub 8y ago
        It doesn't work because iOS Safari hasn't implemented WebRTC Data Channels.
        matthewmacleod 8y ago
        I'm sorry, this is not correct. Like I said, I used data channels in Safari on iOS only a few weeks ago, and I'm not making that up! Since you're not convinced, I looked into it a bit more, and the reason most of the available demos don't work is down to a difference in behaviour between Safari and other browsers, probably to do with address selection for the connection. WebRTC can leak private network configuration in some cases, so Safari seems to be pretty strict in that it requires `getUserMedia` to be called before allowing a data-channel-only to be established. I made this into a small demo (https://codepen.io/anon/pen/GYrqGL https://codepen.io/anon/pen/GYrqGL) and you can see after a couple of clicks of 'connect' that a data channel connection is established and works as expected. This is a bit of a privacy/usability tradeoff. But data channels are very much implemented in Safari.
niutech 8y ago
Congratulations! It took them only 8 years to implement WebP. Here is the original bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919

161 points by shdon 8y ago

That's surprising. I was under the impression that it was already supported since they support WebM. The Wikipedia article [0] says they started evaluating adding support in 2016. Following the source links to this bug report [1]. From a quick glance at the discussion there, it's not obvious to me that they've settled on adding in WebP support. What we need is buy-in from Apple. Although I'd be much more excited about them adding WebM support so we can finally drive the last nail in the GIF coffin. Does anyone know why they pulled it out? If I had to take a shot in the dark, maybe it doesn't perform well on mobile or it consumes too much power? Maybe this is a dumb question, but why will we be supporting both WebM and animated WebP? According to the Wikipedia article, WebP also has animation support.... But isn't that kinda redundant? Do they solve different problems? You can just create WebM containers without an audio stream. While we're on the subject of adding new image formats to the web, does anyone know if there's any interest in adding FLIF support [2]? When it came out it seemed much more interesting to me, but it looks like it never picked up steam. As an aside, can I just say fuck CNET? Here they used a shitty linking practice which I always find incredibly annoying. Instead of linking to primary sources, they add some useless tag links along with references to old CNET articles. How about linking to the relevant bug reports, asshole? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Image_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Image_Format

clear_dg 8y ago
> why will we be supporting both WebM and animated WebP? From: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq (Why not simply support WebM in <img>?) WebM uses more memory, it is less widely supported, uses more resources when playing, and is currently less efficient compression-wise than WebP. About FLIF, I was recently checking it and it's indeed a very interesting format. Notably because it can be used on any type of image. I assume it hasn't pickep up steam because it doesn't have the backing of any big sponsor. Google is pushing WebP, and introducing another format at this time is probably not worth it.
- klodolph 8y ago
  FLIF is interesting, yes, but after doing some more research into it I came to the conclusion it doesn't hold any promise as an image format for the web. The progressive streaming is a cool trick, but if you actually use the progressive stream to embed lossy images in your web page, you end up with lower quality than if you had just used JPEG in the first place, never mind something newer. The difference was pretty stark.
solarkraft 8y ago
CNET is an all around terrible experience.

nwah1 8y ago

Strange to cave so late in the game with AVIF right around the corner. This article really doesn't explain why.

bscphil 8y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, while AVIF may be "right around the corner", it's still quite a way off relative to the speed of technological advances. Unless I'm mistaken AV1 is very far from finalized or being a realistic option for the web, and as AVIF will effectively just be a still-image subset of AV1 it's going to take some time as well. (I'm still very excited about it, however.) I suspect they might be motivated by the rapid way in which HEIF seems to be taking over. My understanding is that comparatively, the patent situation of WebP is much better. If you're a company concerned about software patents on the web, it might suddenly seem that throwing your weight behind WebP as a way of avoiding the proliferation of HEIF is worthwhile.
- cornstalks 8y ago
  > Unless I'm mistaken AV1 is very far from finalized AV1 is finalized: https://aomedia.org/av1-features/get-started/ https://aomedia.org/av1-features/get-started/ I think there are a couple bugs and contradictions between the spec and reference implementation that are being ironed out, but the bitstream is now frozen.
  - rjsw 8y ago
    The copy of Firefox that I'm using to type this has the AV1 library linked to it (via ffmpeg).
- microcolonel 8y ago
  AV1 is enabled for video in the next release of Chrome, and the current release of Firefox has it behind a flag IIRC. The spec has been finalized since early this year, and the results are stunning: You can produce recognizable, sometimes perfectly passable, images at around one tenth of a bit per pixel. Try the "clovisfest" test image here[0], with the most recent AV1 snapshot on the right, and MOZJPEG (the most advanced JPEG encoder on the market, AFAIK) on the left, with both set to the "Tiny" target bitrate (0.1bpp). Smooth, continuous grades look hideous on JPEG up to pretty high bitrates, and JPEG never quite reproduces hard edges or sharp specks properly; AV1 excels at both of these. [0]: Image formats comparison <https://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/#clovisfest&jpg=t&webm=t> https://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/#clovis...

hermanradtke 8y ago

Great, but we really need Safari to support WebP since that is the only option for iOS mobile devices.

tomnipotent 8y ago
My business is 80% mobile traffic, of which 80% is iOS. It feels a lot like the old IE6 days, only (fortunately) less painful.
- realusername 8y ago
  Yeah I confirm, I spend so much time fixing bugs for IE11 and Safari mobile.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    similar market forces at play - apple users use safari coz it is the default browser so you have to develop for safari first not web first just like ms wanted you to develop for IE first not web first.
    - mcintyre1994 8y ago
      It's actually the only browser engine on iOS, all the third party ones are just skins on it with convenience features like syncing with their desktop counterparts.
      - solarkraft 8y ago
        ... For some reason. Because Apple. This is one of the things keeping me from taking them seriously.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    I recall how much joy I felt when my company's IT retired IE 7 and force-upgraded everyone to IE 8. So much polyfills and crutches that we could get rid of... (It was about the same, to a lesser extent, when moving the minimum requirement up to IE 9. That's the point where I stopped thinking about browser support.)

gojomo 8y ago

To my eyes, Fabrice Bellard's HEVC-based 'BPG' looks even better at the same sizes, so I'd love to see it more widely supported, too. See: https://bellard.org/bpg/ https://bellard.org/bpg/

out_of_protocol 8y ago
... except you need to pay loads of money for the (edit: HEVC) license
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Why? The "licensing" information at the bottom of the page makes it seem like it's open source?
  - Youden 8y ago
    Because it's based on HEVC. HEVC patents have a very complex (and expensive) licensing situation right now.
  - okket 8y ago
    Open Source does mean it is free of patents.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      Does not mean it is free of patents.
      - okket 8y ago
        Oops, right. I really thought I wrote this. Sorry.
        yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
        Yeah, I assumed it was just a typo, but I figured we wanted to be absolutely clear here.

zuzun 8y ago

WebP is reasonably fast, this can't be said about the other image formats. I tested WebP, FLIF and BPG when I was looking for a PNG alternative and WebP seemed to be the best choice all-around. The only downside of WebP is that it doesn't work with images larger than 16383 pixels in width or height.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
colejohnson66 8y ago
2^14 pixels in both directions with 4 bytes per pixel (ARGB) puts the pixel data at a maximum size of 2^30 bytes. Just barely enough to be indexed using a 32-bit integer (even a signed one if you want)
- flohofwoe 8y ago
  Looks like WebP uses RIFF data chunks [1] (which look a lot like the old Amiga IFF file format), and the size of such a chunk is a 32-bit integer. Besides, 16k width/height ought to be enough for anyone ;) [1] https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container
  - dllu 8y ago
    I take photos of trains [1] and regularly run into file format limitations as the photos can easily reach hundreds of thousands of pixels wide. Besides, modern cameras such as the Sony a7R II are already producing photos 8000 px wide, and the upcoming 100 megapixel cameras such as the Fujifilm will do 12000 px wide images. It's very easy to hit the limit if you're planning to shoot any panoramas. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu
    - jopsen 8y ago
      If the raw size is approaching 4GB maybe it's fair to split the image.. Anyways, webp is for websites not cameras..

Boulth 8y ago

Are there any technical details on that? For example would Firefox send Accept headers with image/webp?

CorpusCalcium 8y ago
It would essentially have to, in order to support WebP as the web uses it.

astrange 8y ago

That's too bad. WebP was a bad idea released several years too early, now it's stuck with VP8 and the only color format is 8-bit 4:2:0 which is just not good enough. Please don't use it.

freeone3000 8y ago
It's better than JPEG and PNG for most uses, with smaller image sizes. Even 4:2:0 is better than the sRGB usually used in PNG. I'd rather have this now than wait another few years for a few niche usecases (where TIFF can still be used)
- astrange 8y ago
  You can use AV1 or HEIF right now, and they're actually modern formats. > Even 4:2:0 is better than the sRGB usually used in PNG. Better for what? Not for wide-color photographs or any kind of colored text, that's for sure.
  - devwastaken 8y ago
    Afaik there is no av1 or heif browser implementations. Theres far less efficient polyfills for heif that are poor on large images.
    - astrange 8y ago
      HEIF works in Safari, and I believe Android will have it soon if it doesn't already. As for AV1, browsers can add it anytime they want…
      - ValentineC 8y ago
        Looking at CanIUse [1][2], it seems like the HEIF support is in macOS itself, and not the Safari browser. I wouldn't be surprised if the Windows version of Safari didn't support it. [1] https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif [2] https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/3767 https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/issues/3767

vladdanilov 8y ago

WebP lossy and WebP lossless often get mixed up. They are substantially different. While the former is mostly just outdated VP8 4:2:0, it is fast and more pleasing to the eye than JPEG at low quality and more practical there, given it has transparency. The latter is a pretty good option for ARGB images offering 25% improvement over PNG [1], and 20-40% on top of that with near-lossless compression. [1] https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_bitstream_specification https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_...

BurningCycles 8y ago
Not only that, but it's also MUCH faster than PNG in both decoding and encoding. I use it for all images I store as lossless.

dao- 8y ago

People point out that WebP isn't ideal, that there are better alternatives etc. All that may be true, but the most relevant factor here is Google and Microsoft backing WebP. Google has the power to push through its own inventions due to Chrome's market share. If you want less of that, use Firefox. Meanwhile, Mozilla hasn't given up on better formats, as the article points out.

maaaats 8y ago
While I like a lot of the new capabilities of the web, I sometimes feel like it's Google strong-arming them into existence, and the rest has to follow.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Which makes Google Chrome a modern day IE. They push basically proprietary nonsense into the web that eventually gets scrapped or forced into being an open spec at which point its harder to redefine since it became a "works on my browser" implementation.
  - izacus 8y ago
    Except that the problem with IE was stagnation in era of IE6, not new standards backed by patent free and open source libraries.
    - toyg 8y ago
      The original problem with IE was its implementation of early CSS drafts - an open standard with specs. They just picked the “wrong” version of such specs and pushed it with their commercial strength. Everyone else was then caught between the choice of implementing the real (better) spec, or lose compatibility with IE. Similarly, Google now picks the standards it likes, and everyone else is caught between the choice of investing in those or lose compatibility with Chrome. Not much of a difference.
      - 8y ago

wooptoo 8y ago

Good to see Firefox join the party, even tough it's 4 years late. Serving multiple content types based on the http accept header sent by the browser is easy to setup. [1] So Chrome and Firefox users can benefit from the better webp compression while Safari and IE can stick to jpeg. [1] https://wooptoo.com/blog/serving-webp-today/ https://wooptoo.com/blog/serving-webp-today/

glenrivard 8y ago

This is fantastic to see. I hope Firefox will also isolate sites for better Spectre protection like Google did with Chrome. Takes more RAM but the added protection, IMO, is well worth it. Had heard they are working on it. But had not heard a date?

tootie 8y ago

Have browsers started deprecating any image formats to decrease bloat?

kardos 8y ago
Would that meaningfully reduce bloat?
Jaruzel 8y ago
I'd like to see the opposite; Browsers having support for more image formats, especially the legacy ones from 20+ years ago (PCX, ART, ILBM, MAC etc.). That way interesting and useful imagery from days gone by aren't lost forever when the few remaining decoders never get ported to newer operating systems.

xvilka 8y ago

People compare it to JPG or PNG. I think the main point is for deprecating GIFs, with their poor quality and very slow processing.

writepub 8y ago

Mobile web consumption is now the majority of web engagement. Given that, iOS Safari's reluctance speaks volumes. I bet this has anything to do with technology, and more with Apple's business rivalry with the open web. Given how iOS Safari is the least standards compliant browser of our time (other than the now defunct IE), I'm surprised they even implemented webassembly & webRtc (they didn't implement the data channel)

matthewmacleod 8y ago
webRtc (they didn't implement the data channel) That is not correct. I've used WebRTC data channels myself on iOS and it works fine.
- writepub 8y ago
  Can you link to a WebRTC Data Channel URL that works on iOS Safari? Here's a simple WebRTC DataChannel demo that doesn't work on iOS 12.0 Safari https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/datachannel/basic/ https://webrtc.github.io/samples/src/content/datachannel/bas...
  - matthewmacleod 8y ago
    I'm afraid not – none of the available demos seem to work, but I don't know why that would be the case. All I can say is that I worked with the technology pretty extensively, and was absolutely able to use a data channel between Chrome and Safari 11 on both desktop and mobile without any issues.
    - writepub 8y ago
      It doesn't work because iOS Safari hasn't implemented WebRTC Data Channels.
      - matthewmacleod 8y ago
        I'm sorry, this is not correct. Like I said, I used data channels in Safari on iOS only a few weeks ago, and I'm not making that up! Since you're not convinced, I looked into it a bit more, and the reason most of the available demos don't work is down to a difference in behaviour between Safari and other browsers, probably to do with address selection for the connection. WebRTC can leak private network configuration in some cases, so Safari seems to be pretty strict in that it requires `getUserMedia` to be called before allowing a data-channel-only to be established. I made this into a small demo (https://codepen.io/anon/pen/GYrqGL https://codepen.io/anon/pen/GYrqGL) and you can see after a couple of clicks of 'connect' that a data channel connection is established and works as expected. This is a bit of a privacy/usability tradeoff. But data channels are very much implemented in Safari.

niutech 8y ago

Congratulations! It took them only 8 years to implement WebP. Here is the original bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919