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Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

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Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#11

Post by carlosjobim »

dngit wrote: post #6
carlosjobim wrote: post #3

Because you also want to sell to customers who have older devices, which can't display WebP. People who are not computer enthusiasts can keep a machine around for a decade or more. The gains from using WebP are negligible, the downside when they break are significant.

I would argue that the gain is more than "negligible" in some cases. I'm building an app involving storing and serving images and I'm surprised that for the same images with the same resolution/quality, WebP is often 3x-4x smaller than PNG, which translates to lower storage cost, faster serving time, and happier users. You made a good point that people with older devices wouldn't be able to use apps like mine. But fo…

Lowering your hosting costs usually translates into savings counted in the tens or hundreds of dollars per year. Loosing just a single customer because they can't see images of your product means loosing income of tens or hundreds of dollars, depending on what you're selling. Now take that times hundreds, or thousands of customers.

Optimized JPG images are tiny, and will load fast on any device. Any web designer worth their salt must know how to make a performant site without needing WebP images.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#12

Post by babyent »

I use webp in my applications.

HEIC don’t display in browsers. Or maybe they do now but I haven’t checked lol. AVIF don’t work well in iOS messages for example. If you send someone an AVIF it asks you to download it. WEBP works just fine, like you’d expect any image to show up.

I used to convert any non JPEG image to JPEG.

Nowadays I convert any non WEBP image to WEBP.

My B2B saas has a file explorer functionally in it. Any image for display is served as WEBP, and it is converted after upload. The WEBP files are like 20-90% smaller than what the user uploaded. Of course, the user can download and I give them their original file back.

AWS charges me for bandwidth which is more expensive than storage. Most users upload images and view them (open it up in viewer) maybe twice. But they will scroll a lot more and when the explorer opens in grid they can see anywhere from a dozen to 40 images. A small amount will download the original again.

WEBP is used by a lot of non-Google companies. Notion, for example converts images to webp.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#14

Post by babyent »

wruza wrote: post #13

I process large amounts of images for sd and also do simple graphics work sometimes. Webp saves some space but is slow af at saving, like 10-50x slow. So not even remotely a good tradeoff. Reading is fine, afaict.

What do you mean it’s slow at saving? Do you mean the conversion is slow?

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#15

Post by wruza »

babyent wrote: post #14
wruza wrote: post #13

I process large amounts of images for sd and also do simple graphics work sometimes. Webp saves some space but is slow af at saving, like 10-50x slow. So not even remotely a good tradeoff. Reading is fine, afaict.

What do you mean it’s slow at saving? Do you mean the conversion is slow?

Yes, all tools freeze for much longer when it comes to webp output.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#16

Post by nicoloren »

JohnFen wrote: post #8

As a user, WebP doesn't really bring anything to me that matters. I mildly dislike it (not enough to really complain), though, because a lot of my tools still don't understand the format. So, at least for me, it's 99% inertia.

Some browser or older versions don't support webp too. I think of the web browser in the Kobo e-readers for example.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#17

Post by babyent »

wruza wrote: post #15
babyent wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it’s slow at saving? Do you mean the conversion is slow?

Yes, all tools freeze for much longer when it comes to webp output.

Ah ok. I do image processing via aws lambda. Takes like 400ms to 5s depending on size and original format.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't more apps using WebP format?

#18

Post by toast0 »

solardev wrote: post #5
carlosjobim wrote: post #3

Because you also want to sell to customers who have older devices, which can't display WebP. People who are not computer enthusiasts can keep a machine around for a decade or more. The gains from using WebP are negligible, the downside when they break are significant.

If a computer/browser is so old it can't support WebP, it probably also can't support modern HTTPS/TLS requirements. How do they even check out?

TLS 1.2 is still widely supported; the standard dates from 2008, but didn't really get pushed hard IMHO until right before HeartBleed (April 2014); and there was the SHA1 certificate deprecation that took effect in 2016. A lot of things that got updated to use sha2 certs also got updated to use TLS 1.2, and should work fine with most https out there.

Chrome had support for WebP pretty early, because Google, but caniuse.com says 2018 for Edge, 2019 for Firefox and 2020 for Safari. There's a lot of potential software out there that works in a post-2016 timeframe, but not with WebP.

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