4 ms·

Deploying New Image Formats on the Web

79 points by igrigorik 14y ago

hfs 14y ago
Is an average page really over 1 MB now? I find that kind of hard to believe.
greggman 14y ago
As a server engineer this sounds like the correct solution. As someone who runs some blogs, not so much. If I want to put various formats of images on my blogger.com site (or other similar service) today, assuming some syntax was added to HTML to allow it, I can do that immediately. I don't have to wait N years for the people who run blogger.com to update their software. This is a problem often run into between sys admins who run their own servers and the rest of use who don't. They forgot that the majority of users don't run their own servers.
- igrigorik 14y ago
  You can put as many img tags as you want, with any format that you like, today. If your visitors support the formats you're emdedding, then you're good to go. Strategy #2: javascript detection, ala modernizr webp tests. Most users who don't run their own servers also don't know a thing about image formats - so the point may be moot. :-) In fact, this is why this problem should be automated. Most blogs are serving uncompressed images, which are resized on the client - worst of all cases.
  - greggman 14y ago
    > You can put as many img tags as you want, with any format that you like, today. If your visitors support the formats you're emdedding you're good to go Hmmm, If I put multiple image tags with various formats that may or may not work on different browsers I'll get lots of broken image boxes on my page. Not quite "good to go" I think. No? > Most users who don't run their own servers also don't know a thing about image formats Really? I suspect that very few web designers know how to run a server but all of them know the differences between .png, .gif, .jpg and now whatever is needed for HD-DPI
thwarted 14y ago
The img lowsrc attribute was deprecated a long time ago. If content negotiation isn't going to be used, then a system like that, with separate attributes for the different URLs, makes more sense than overloading the contents of the current src attribute with a custom, differently parsed format (explode on commas or whathaveyou).
- politician 14y ago
  The comma delimited list of file extensions was an illustration of a bad solution. The actual proposal was to use proper content negotiation and the Vary header for intermediate caches.

79 points by igrigorik 14y ago

hfs 14y ago

Is an average page really over 1 MB now? I find that kind of hard to believe.

As a server engineer this sounds like the correct solution. As someone who runs some blogs, not so much. If I want to put various formats of images on my blogger.com site (or other similar service) today, assuming some syntax was added to HTML to allow it, I can do that immediately. I don't have to wait N years for the people who run blogger.com to update their software. This is a problem often run into between sys admins who run their own servers and the rest of use who don't. They forgot that the majority of users don't run their own servers.

igrigorik 14y ago
You can put as many img tags as you want, with any format that you like, today. If your visitors support the formats you're emdedding, then you're good to go. Strategy #2: javascript detection, ala modernizr webp tests. Most users who don't run their own servers also don't know a thing about image formats - so the point may be moot. :-) In fact, this is why this problem should be automated. Most blogs are serving uncompressed images, which are resized on the client - worst of all cases.
- greggman 14y ago
  > You can put as many img tags as you want, with any format that you like, today. If your visitors support the formats you're emdedding you're good to go Hmmm, If I put multiple image tags with various formats that may or may not work on different browsers I'll get lots of broken image boxes on my page. Not quite "good to go" I think. No? > Most users who don't run their own servers also don't know a thing about image formats Really? I suspect that very few web designers know how to run a server but all of them know the differences between .png, .gif, .jpg and now whatever is needed for HD-DPI

thwarted 14y ago

The img lowsrc attribute was deprecated a long time ago. If content negotiation isn't going to be used, then a system like that, with separate attributes for the different URLs, makes more sense than overloading the contents of the current src attribute with a custom, differently parsed format (explode on commas or whathaveyou).

politician 14y ago
The comma delimited list of file extensions was an illustration of a bad solution. The actual proposal was to use proper content negotiation and the Vary header for intermediate caches.