Could supporting JPEG XL natively be an opportunity for Edge and Firefox to compete with Chrome seriously?
Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#22Rationale from thread: > Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for t…
Which isn’t a real rationale. It says what some common problems are but not why specifically jpeg-xl is unfit. Are we really to believe that a new format is going to be perfect out of the gate? Surely there’s a path to introducing a new format that doesn’t screw over 3rd parties. I mean Google has been iron fisted with certain other formats… Something else happened here.
Other browsers can still add JPEG XL support and that would put pressure on Chrome to do the same. They just don't want to be the first mover.
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#23I increasingly despair over the possibility of any new image format getting traction. That means support in web browsers (functionally, Chrome) and on desktop (Windows explorer, etc.). WebP is probably the one that's advanced the furthest but AFAIK it doesn't even get thumbnailed in the Windows file browser and normies absolutely hate it since it won't work everywhere a PNG or JPEG will.
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#24Rationale from thread: > Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for t…
I think that's a fair argument, except they almost certainly did not apply the same yardstick to WebP.
Well in fairness when WebP support was added in Chrome over 10 years ago it was a massive, massive improvement over the existing image formats that were being commonly used on the web.
JPEG XL's problem is that WebP has now existed for 10 years and has widespread support.
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#25> We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google
To add some info, JPEG XL can still be enabled on the latest Edge, Opera, and Firefox Nightly versions. It can be enabled on Chrome 91 - 110 (not included).
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#26Rationale from thread: > Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for t…
That seems like a rather high bar to reach given that almost every other format got to do it the other way around (browser support before hardware level encoders etc).
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#27I increasingly despair over the possibility of any new image format getting traction. That means support in web browsers (functionally, Chrome) and on desktop (Windows explorer, etc.). WebP is probably the one that's advanced the furthest but AFAIK it doesn't even get thumbnailed in the Windows file browser and normies absolutely hate it since it won't work everywhere a PNG or JPEG will.
I'm not a normie, but I also hate WEBP "since it won't work everywhere a PNG or JPEG will" (i.e., an image viewer).
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#28Rationale from thread: > Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for t…
Which isn’t a real rationale. It says what some common problems are but not why specifically jpeg-xl is unfit. Are we really to believe that a new format is going to be perfect out of the gate? Surely there’s a path to introducing a new format that doesn’t screw over 3rd parties. I mean Google has been iron fisted with certain other formats… Something else happened here.
Well... within the last ~1.5 years, AVIF has become natively supported on Windows 10 and Windows 11 (Windows 1903 with a free Store extension), macOS 13 (no AV1, but yes to AVIF), iOS 16 (no AV1, also yes to AVIF), and Android 12. And in browsers, AVIF won Firefox, Safari, and Chrome all together as a default supported option, JXL did not and was only an optional feature flag in Firefox.
Basically, AVIF won the OS-level support race by a landslide. And then got natively supported in all the common browsers by a landslide. JXL hasn't taken any victories in OS-level support yet, or any victories as an enabled-by-default option in any browser. With the winner increasingly becoming obvious, time to cut the losses on JXL and run. And thus the "we don't need another format" argument when AVIF is clearly winning now.
Part of this may be as well that AVIF is basically just an AV1 still. If you implement AV1, you've got 95% of your AVIF support already done.
Edit: And for those wondering why AVIF won, it might just be timing. The AVIF spec was finalized in 2019, while JXL was only informally finalized in 2020, and had different parts formally finalized in 2021 and 2022. AVIF had the head start and the implementation advantage.
Edit 2 for @jonsneyers: True... but AVIF was ready to go before JXL, and so logically was enabled first. Chrome enabled AVIF before JXL even had an informal spec completed (Chrome enabled AVIF on August 24, 2020; versus, December 24, 2020 for the informal JXL spec being "finished", with formal standardization dragging on into 2021 and 2022). I take that as a sign the JPEG XL team was way too late and needed to be ~2 years quicker. When your competition has literally designed, formalized, implemented, and enabled a spec before you've even finished the informal standard, you're toast.
Edit 3: And a third reason, because I've not found enough already. If you join the AOM, you don't just get patents for AV1 and AVIF - you also get assistance from all the other members to defend AVIF and AV1 from patent lawsuits on any of them. JXL is just Apache 2, which means it is patent-free... from contributors only, outsiders can still sue JXL implementers for patents. As a result, AVIF has a much, much larger stick to hit patent trolls with - definitely preferable for an open format.
Edit 4: Because I'm probably going to reference this post in the future, I guess I'll add yet another reason. AV1 is a new standard being widely worked on and accepted by almost everyone, and AVIF is following. JPEG meanwhile has released JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPEG XS, and JPEG XT standards, all of which failed to take off. What makes anyone think that JPEG's "5th time's the charm" replacement for JPEG will be successful? I wouldn't hope in it. Neither, probably, would any other tech company, who would just look at it as the JPEG Forum's latest fad.
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's a fair argument, except they almost certainly did not apply the same yardstick to WebP.
Well in fairness when WebP support was added in Chrome over 10 years ago it was a massive, massive improvement over the existing image formats that were being commonly used on the web. JPEG XL's problem is that WebP has now existed for 10 years and has widespread support.
Firefox didn't add Webp support for a long time, because it wasn't a massive, massive improvement over the existing image formats.
https://research.mozilla.org/2013/10/17/studying-lossy-image...
More recent coverage: https://siipo.la/blog/is-webp-really-better-than-jpeg
Re: Chrome Responds "No" to JPEG XL
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well in fairness when WebP support was added in Chrome over 10 years ago it was a massive, massive improvement over the existing image formats that were being commonly used on the web. JPEG XL's problem is that WebP has now existed for 10 years and has widespread support.
Firefox didn't add Webp support for a long time, because it wasn't a massive, massive improvement over the existing image formats. https://research.mozilla.org/2013/10/17/studying-lossy-image... More recent coverage: https://siipo.la/blog/is-webp-really-better-than-jpeg
Neither of your links support your claim that Firefox avoided adding Webp support because it wasn't technically superiour.
Instead, what happened was that WebP started to be used on the web and this broke websites for Firefox users.
Since Firefox is by no means dominant on the web, we had to follow suit or lose more users.