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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

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.

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.