8 ms·

WebP – A new image format for the Web

93 points by personjerry 13y ago

workhere-io 13y ago
Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible (http://caniuse.com/webp http://caniuse.com/webp), and it seems the solution to make WebP images display in non-supported browsers is through the help of a rather large JS file (http://webpjs.appspot.com/ http://webpjs.appspot.com/).
- skbohra123 13y ago
  This will improve with time, every new technology starts like this and if it's better than the current technology, it sticks.
  - eurleif 13y ago
    If it's sufficiently better than the current technology to overcome the switching costs, it sticks.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    WebP was released 3 years ago hence your entire premise is faulty. The real truth is that being the best technically rarely guarantees success in the market.
    - buzzkills 13y ago
      It took longer than that for png to stick.
      - threeseed 13y ago
        You missed my point. Technology is not the reason WebP is probably going nowhere. Apple, Microsoft and Firefox for whatever reason (politics/principle) either won't support defacto standards or have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing so (see SPDY). And without those three you are never going to get above 45%.
        emilis_info 13y ago
        How can you call things unsupported by the majority of players in the market "defacto standards"?
        clarry 13y ago
        On top of that, SPDY is an experimental protocol that may eventually (after enough iteration) make it into a standard (HTTP 2.0). It's not standard yet, and definitely not defacto standard.
        cpeterso 13y ago
        Mozilla's adoption of SPDY shows that they (we) are not dogmatically refusing Chrome innovations.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- Theodores 13y ago
  Actually it is Google Pagespeed where the magic happens. You serve jpg, gif, png, pcx^H^H^H and then your nginx/Apache converts them to webp for you, on the fly, cached. If the person requesting your page runs chrome they get webp. So that means everyone else gets a slow image format? Yes, but you have saved bandwidth and your pages have loaded quickly for ~50% of your users. I don't think webp is really a source image format, more something that is browser and Pagespeed specific. Try it, you will be impressed.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    I'm confused what you are doing. You are taking an existing lossy format e.g. JPG and then recoding it in another lossy format. So yes you may save an insignificant amount of bandwidth but at the expense of introducing potentially significant artefacts in your images. What serious web developer is going to want to do this ?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - threeseed 13y ago
        WebP IS lossy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP And as you can see from the page there are artefacts that humans can perceive.
        jkn 13y ago
        Both the original article and the Wikipedia page state that WebP support lossy and lossless compression. I guess using lossless WebP would not make sense for JPEG files as the result would probably be bigger than the original JPEG, but it might work well with PNG.
        evilduck 13y ago
        https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_bitstream_specification https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_...
- jlouis 13y ago
  Google thought of this. Their Chrome browser probes for WebP server-side support through content negotiation. So you can still serve JPEGs to browsers, but those which are modern can get WebP images.
ninthfrank07 13y ago
If anyone is interested, the discussion on implementing WebP support in Firefox has recently moved from Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856375 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856375) to mozilla.dev.media (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.media/qMtHAyn2clI https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.media/qM...).
- ZenoArrow 13y ago
  Found this comment interesting... > What about a deal: if Google implements APNG, we implement WebP ? ;)
maga 13y ago
Why is this up here? Anything changed about WebP recently? Any news I might have missed?
tommoor 13y ago
We've been using WebP in production in our chrome-only web application for over a year now, works well but not sure why it's on the front page of HN! Google announcement about YouTube supporting it? http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/23/google-webp-youtube-thumbnails http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/23/google-webp-youtube-thumb...
cromwellian 13y ago
I sense another flame war. Unless there is new data from a new set of image quality/compression tests, I would urge people to just look up the old threads instead of rehashing the arguments again. Note: Although YouTube announced a switch, Google+ has long been using WebP to serve up images in the stream with substantial savings, so the usage of it by Google on their services is not new.
danmaz74 13y ago
Transparency on lossy compressed images is something that I really crave.
- Too 13y ago
  Is the transparency channel also compressed or only the rgb?
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    Alpha channel should be non-lossy compressed AFAIK.
    - mnsc 13y ago
      "should" as in it's your opinion? From the docs it looks like the alpha channel can be encoded lossy as well. https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/cwebp#options https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/cwebp#options -alpha_q int Specify the compression factor for alpha compression between 0 and 100. Lossless compression of alpha is achieved using a value of 100, while the lower values result in a lossy compression. The default is 100.
      - danmaz74 13y ago
        "should" as in "I remember reading something about it". Makes sense, if that's default. Anyway, thanks for pointing that out!
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  WebP's support for animation is also great. Like animated GIFs, but in true colour with VP8 compression and optional transparency!
  - TD-Linux 13y ago
    It's not really VP8 compression, as in the full video codec. But it's neat regardless.
KaiserPro 13y ago
this seems rather prescient: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- ZenoArrow 13y ago
  How is that prescient? Standards can get replaced when something better comes along. The question is whether WebP will be compelling enough to overtake what came before. It looks promising at first glance. If anyone at a browser development company is reading this, vector image formats are more in need of disruption than raster image formats, SVG is versatile but it's bulky, a more compact vector image format would be welcome, especially in the age of responsive design. That said, some technology standards can stick around far beyond what they should. MP3 is a classic example, there are far better music formats than MP3 (you'd be hard pressed to find a worse one that's still supported), but because of the sheer volume of music in that format, the 'good enough' status, and the limited abilities of some of the hardware players to handle better formats, we're stuck with it. This isn't something we should seek to encourage, but it does happen.
  - userbinator 13y ago
    > a more compact vector image format would be welcome SWF. It's more than just a vector image format, but it is far better than SVG in terms of both filesize and resources required to render. Too bad for the "Flash hater's stigma" and the direction Adobe took their player after the acquistion... although there are now a few other alternatives including Mozilla's Shumway.
    - ZenoArrow 13y ago
      Can you give a size comparison between SWF and SVG (e.g. file size of same image in both formats)? Something along the lines of HVIF could be a good fit for the web (perhaps less limitations on image ratios): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format
    - evilduck 13y ago
wooptoo 13y ago
http://caniuse.com/webp http://caniuse.com/webp Webp support in other browsers than Chrome is virtually nonexistent. However if a big chunk of your audience browses from Chrome, you could serve Webp today. It can be done in a browser neutral manner by looking at the Accept header.
- pornel 13y ago
  For IE you can serve JPEG-XR http://caniuse.com/jpegxr http://caniuse.com/jpegxr and for Safari JPEG 2000.
mentaat 13y ago
why hasn't firefox implemented this yet?
crazygringo 13y ago
Interestingly enough, WebP is a great format to use if you don't want users saving your images. More than once I've right-clicked an image to save it to disk, only later to discover I have no program on my computer which can open or view it, except for Chrome! No thumbnails, no previews, no Photoshop, nothing. (I know there are plug-ins, if I really wanted to.)

93 points by personjerry 13y ago

Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible (http://caniuse.com/webp http://caniuse.com/webp), and it seems the solution to make WebP images display in non-supported browsers is through the help of a rather large JS file (http://webpjs.appspot.com/ http://webpjs.appspot.com/).

skbohra123 13y ago
This will improve with time, every new technology starts like this and if it's better than the current technology, it sticks.
- eurleif 13y ago
  If it's sufficiently better than the current technology to overcome the switching costs, it sticks.
- threeseed 13y ago
  WebP was released 3 years ago hence your entire premise is faulty. The real truth is that being the best technically rarely guarantees success in the market.
  - buzzkills 13y ago
    It took longer than that for png to stick.
    - threeseed 13y ago
      You missed my point. Technology is not the reason WebP is probably going nowhere. Apple, Microsoft and Firefox for whatever reason (politics/principle) either won't support defacto standards or have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing so (see SPDY). And without those three you are never going to get above 45%.
      - emilis_info 13y ago
        How can you call things unsupported by the majority of players in the market "defacto standards"?
        clarry 13y ago
        On top of that, SPDY is an experimental protocol that may eventually (after enough iteration) make it into a standard (HTTP 2.0). It's not standard yet, and definitely not defacto standard.
      - cpeterso 13y ago
        Mozilla's adoption of SPDY shows that they (we) are not dogmatically refusing Chrome innovations.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
Theodores 13y ago
Actually it is Google Pagespeed where the magic happens. You serve jpg, gif, png, pcx^H^H^H and then your nginx/Apache converts them to webp for you, on the fly, cached. If the person requesting your page runs chrome they get webp. So that means everyone else gets a slow image format? Yes, but you have saved bandwidth and your pages have loaded quickly for ~50% of your users. I don't think webp is really a source image format, more something that is browser and Pagespeed specific. Try it, you will be impressed.
- threeseed 13y ago
  I'm confused what you are doing. You are taking an existing lossy format e.g. JPG and then recoding it in another lossy format. So yes you may save an insignificant amount of bandwidth but at the expense of introducing potentially significant artefacts in your images. What serious web developer is going to want to do this ?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - threeseed 13y ago
      WebP IS lossy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP And as you can see from the page there are artefacts that humans can perceive.
      - jkn 13y ago
        Both the original article and the Wikipedia page state that WebP support lossy and lossless compression. I guess using lossless WebP would not make sense for JPEG files as the result would probably be bigger than the original JPEG, but it might work well with PNG.
      - evilduck 13y ago
        https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_bitstream_specification https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_lossless_...
jlouis 13y ago
Google thought of this. Their Chrome browser probes for WebP server-side support through content negotiation. So you can still serve JPEGs to browsers, but those which are modern can get WebP images.

ninthfrank07 13y ago

If anyone is interested, the discussion on implementing WebP support in Firefox has recently moved from Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856375 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=856375) to mozilla.dev.media (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.media/qMtHAyn2clI https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.media/qM...).

ZenoArrow 13y ago
Found this comment interesting... > What about a deal: if Google implements APNG, we implement WebP ? ;)

maga 13y ago

Why is this up here? Anything changed about WebP recently? Any news I might have missed?

tommoor 13y ago

We've been using WebP in production in our chrome-only web application for over a year now, works well but not sure why it's on the front page of HN! Google announcement about YouTube supporting it? http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/23/google-webp-youtube-thumbnails http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/23/google-webp-youtube-thumb...

cromwellian 13y ago

I sense another flame war. Unless there is new data from a new set of image quality/compression tests, I would urge people to just look up the old threads instead of rehashing the arguments again. Note: Although YouTube announced a switch, Google+ has long been using WebP to serve up images in the stream with substantial savings, so the usage of it by Google on their services is not new.

danmaz74 13y ago

Transparency on lossy compressed images is something that I really crave.

Too 13y ago
Is the transparency channel also compressed or only the rgb?
- danmaz74 13y ago
  Alpha channel should be non-lossy compressed AFAIK.
  - mnsc 13y ago
    "should" as in it's your opinion? From the docs it looks like the alpha channel can be encoded lossy as well. https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/cwebp#options https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/cwebp#options -alpha_q int Specify the compression factor for alpha compression between 0 and 100. Lossless compression of alpha is achieved using a value of 100, while the lower values result in a lossy compression. The default is 100.
    - danmaz74 13y ago
      "should" as in "I remember reading something about it". Makes sense, if that's default. Anyway, thanks for pointing that out!
TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
WebP's support for animation is also great. Like animated GIFs, but in true colour with VP8 compression and optional transparency!
- TD-Linux 13y ago
  It's not really VP8 compression, as in the full video codec. But it's neat regardless.

KaiserPro 13y ago

this seems rather prescient: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

ZenoArrow 13y ago
How is that prescient? Standards can get replaced when something better comes along. The question is whether WebP will be compelling enough to overtake what came before. It looks promising at first glance. If anyone at a browser development company is reading this, vector image formats are more in need of disruption than raster image formats, SVG is versatile but it's bulky, a more compact vector image format would be welcome, especially in the age of responsive design. That said, some technology standards can stick around far beyond what they should. MP3 is a classic example, there are far better music formats than MP3 (you'd be hard pressed to find a worse one that's still supported), but because of the sheer volume of music in that format, the 'good enough' status, and the limited abilities of some of the hardware players to handle better formats, we're stuck with it. This isn't something we should seek to encourage, but it does happen.
- userbinator 13y ago
  > a more compact vector image format would be welcome SWF. It's more than just a vector image format, but it is far better than SVG in terms of both filesize and resources required to render. Too bad for the "Flash hater's stigma" and the direction Adobe took their player after the acquistion... although there are now a few other alternatives including Mozilla's Shumway.
  - ZenoArrow 13y ago
    Can you give a size comparison between SWF and SVG (e.g. file size of same image in both formats)? Something along the lines of HVIF could be a good fit for the web (perhaps less limitations on image ratios): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_Vector_Icon_Format
  - evilduck 13y ago

wooptoo 13y ago

http://caniuse.com/webp http://caniuse.com/webp Webp support in other browsers than Chrome is virtually nonexistent. However if a big chunk of your audience browses from Chrome, you could serve Webp today. It can be done in a browser neutral manner by looking at the Accept header.

pornel 13y ago
For IE you can serve JPEG-XR http://caniuse.com/jpegxr http://caniuse.com/jpegxr and for Safari JPEG 2000.

mentaat 13y ago

why hasn't firefox implemented this yet?

crazygringo 13y ago

Interestingly enough, WebP is a great format to use if you don't want users saving your images. More than once I've right-clicked an image to save it to disk, only later to discover I have no program on my computer which can open or view it, except for Chrome! No thumbnails, no previews, no Photoshop, nothing. (I know there are plug-ins, if I really wanted to.)