WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google) • Hacker News Board

Yeah, from poking around the history, looks like Google has just about got added (but not tagged into a release - 0.1.3 is still current) all the features Mozilla saw as blockers previously, so it's possible the format could be added to Firefox and start seeing more traction soon

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#5

Post by zokier » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:01 PM UTC

rb2k_ wrote: post #3

WebP is 2 years old by this point in time. Is there anything new that I missed?

Maybe a demonstration of its (lack of) success, if people do not even remember it anymore :)

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#6

Post by beggi » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:08 PM UTC

rb2k_ wrote: post #3

WebP is 2 years old by this point in time. Is there anything new that I missed?

Exactly, is and will stay irrelevant for web developers until it gets adopted by more browsers. Google displays PNG still today on Google.com for Chrome users.

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#7

Post by rollypolly » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:17 PM UTC

beggi wrote: post #6

rb2k_ wrote: post #3

WebP is 2 years old by this point in time. Is there anything new that I missed?

Exactly, is and will stay irrelevant for web developers until it gets adopted by more browsers. Google displays PNG still today on Google.com for Chrome users.

Not just browsers, but all image editors (natively) like Photoshop.

But at its core, WebP hasn't been shown to be more than marginally better than JPEG, so why bother modifying your tool chain and work flow? You generally need something to be an order of magnitude better for people to bother.

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#8

Post by annon » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:50 PM UTC

beggi wrote: post #6

rb2k_ wrote: post #3

WebP is 2 years old by this point in time. Is there anything new that I missed?

Exactly, is and will stay irrelevant for web developers until it gets adopted by more browsers. Google displays PNG still today on Google.com for Chrome users.

Yeah, I feel the slight advantages it brings to the table are easily overwhelmed by the fact that I have to carry two sets of images, and use browser detection to switch between them. Even if Firefox and IE picked it up, their older versions are still not going to support the format. This makes it not very useful for at least 4-5 years.

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#9

Post by mirsadm » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:52 PM UTC

rollypolly wrote: post #7

beggi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, is and will stay irrelevant for web developers until it gets adopted by more browsers. Google displays PNG still today on Google.com for Chrome users.

Not just browsers, but all image editors (natively) like Photoshop. But at its core, WebP hasn't been shown to be more than marginally better than JPEG, so why bother modifying your tool chain and work flow? You generally need something to be an order of magnitude better for people to bother.

WebP support transparency with lossy compression which is a huge advantage over JPEG.

When I was studying image compression back at university we wrote a whole bunch of lossy/lossless codecs. The issue is that most of the cool algorithms are protected by patents (such as Arithmetic coding). JPEG is quite old now and you can achieve much better results with wavelet coding as opposed to the traditional DCT approach. Plus it doesn't suffer the horrible blockiness effect that quantized DCT based stuff does.

Edit: If anybody has a few hours of time to waste here's a thesis I wrote on deblocking JPEG images a long time ago. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/hons/projects/2005/Mirsad.Maka...

Re: WebP - A new image format for the Web (by Google)

#10

Post by mistercow » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 6:22 PM UTC

mirsadm wrote: post #9

rollypolly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just browsers, but all image editors (natively) like Photoshop. But at its core, WebP hasn't been shown to be more than marginally better than JPEG, so why bother modifying your tool chain and work flow? You generally need something to be an order of magnitude better for people to bother.

WebP support transparency with lossy compression which is a huge advantage over JPEG. When I was studying image compression back at university we wrote a whole bunch of lossy/lossless codecs. The issue is that most of the cool algorithms are protected by patents (such as Arithmetic coding). JPEG is quite old now and you can achieve much better results with wavelet coding as opposed to the traditional DCT approach. Pl…

> such as Arithmetic coding

Isn't range coding widely viewed as being a legitimate workaround for the arithmetic coding patents? I guess in a year or two the question will be irrelevant, as the last of those patents will expire soon.