WebP – A new image format for the Web • Hacker News Board

WebP – A new image format for the Web

#1

Post by personjerry » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 6:34 AM UTC

WebP – A new image format for the Web
developers.google.com

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#2

Post by workhere-io » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:28 AM UTC

Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible (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/).

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#3

Post by skbohra123 » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:46 AM UTC

workhere-io wrote: post #2

Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible ( 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/ ).

This will improve with time, every new technology starts like this and if it's better than the current technology, it sticks.

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#4

Post by ninthfrank07 » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:46 AM UTC

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) to mozilla.dev.media (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.media/qM...).

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#5

Post by eurleif » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:54 AM UTC

skbohra123 wrote: post #3

workhere-io wrote: post #2

Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible ( 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/ ).

This will improve with time, every new technology starts like this and if it's better than the current technology, it sticks.

If it's sufficiently better than the current technology to overcome the switching costs, it sticks.

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#6

Post by maga » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:55 AM UTC

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

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#7

Post by tommoor » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 7:57 AM UTC

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-thumb...

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#8

Post by danmaz74 » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 8:06 AM UTC

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

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#9

Post by Theodores » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 8:20 AM UTC

workhere-io wrote: post #2

Things to consider: WebP browser support is currently terrible ( 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/ ).

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.

Re: WebP – A new image format for the Web

#10

Post by Too » Sun, Mar 23, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #8

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

Is the transparency channel also compressed or only the rgb?