New image format for the web

[kyrathaba]

[attach]

[Renegade]

I think the success/failure of it rests entirely in 2 sources:

1) Google creates BSD licensed code for developers and brings the WebP format up to par with others
2) Microsoft incorporates support into IE

It must be up to par. The best format now is PNG with transparency. Alpha is not optional anymore. Otherwise, it's only good for photo albums.

Nobody will use WebP if it doesn't work in IE.

Looks promising though. A 39% reduction is a LOT~!

[app103]

I think the success/failure of it rests entirely in 2 sources:

Make that 3 sources:

3. Support in average consumer grade cameras. People take photos with their phones these days, then upload the photos directly to their blog, facebook, etc. Unless the phone's camera (or the software running on the web service they upload them to) is going to automatically convert it for them, most people likely won't bother going out of their way to figure out how, and will post whatever their camera produces by default.

[zridling]

Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today.

______________________________
Anything to speed things up is good. Google should continue to focus on this kind of thing and tell Eric Schmidt to STFU and quit freaking everyone out with every interview he does.

[justice]

I think the success/failure of it rests entirely in 2 sources:

1) Google creates BSD licensed code for developers and brings the WebP format up to par with others
2) Microsoft incorporates support into IE

It must be up to par. The best format now is PNG with transparency. Alpha is not optional anymore. Otherwise, it's only good for photo albums.

Nobody will use WebP if it doesn't work in IE.

Looks promising though. A 39% reduction is a LOT~!

IT's a replacement for JPEG not PNG (ie photographs, not logos and shapes)

[Renegade]

IT's a replacement for JPEG not PNG (ie photographs, not logos and shapes)

Yes, but it's still an infrastructure change, and now that PNG can FINALLY be used for design properly (after many years of not), any replacement for JPEG must offer some kind of actual benefit. Another lossey compression format just won't cut it. Smaller is great, but it's not a very tangible benefit. Given that there is so much bandwidth available and broadband is everywhere (kind of), nobody cares much about size. But, transparency in a lossey format would truly be a liberating thing for designers as it would elevate the level of possibilities just that much higher. PNG isn't used for photos because it uses GZIP compression. But a format that was designed for photos with alpha? That would be sexy!

[Tuxman]

Yawn. Another dead idea by Google. They should start improving the .png format instead if they are all about size.
All known "comparisons" seem blurry. There is not even a real advantage to JPEG yet.

As I stated above:
Yawn.

[CWuestefeld]

The only in-depth analysis and comparison I've seen is here: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/541

I could understand the push for “WebP” if it was better than JPEG.  And sure, technically as a file format it is, and an encoder could be made for it that’s better than JPEG.  But note the word “could”.  Why announce it now when libvpx is still such an awful encoder?

Other stuff:

The best format now is PNG with transparency. Alpha is not optional anymore. Otherwise, it's only good for photo albums.

They seem to have that covered. See http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/09/webp-new-image-format-for-web.html:

We plan to add support for a transparency layer, also known as alpha channel in a future update.

Nobody will use WebP if it doesn't work in IE.

Looks promising though. A 39% reduction is a LOT~!

I'm too lazy to look up a citation, but IE just dropped below 50% marketshare, with Chrome making a big leap. If Google can cut down file (and transmission size) for 39% of what it's serving, just on the percentage of users that have Chrome (not to mention Firefox, who will presumably add support), they can save some real money.

I do have some reservations about the digicam issue, though. And the addition of WebP support to digicams may not be trivial. One of the criteria people consider when shopping for a camera is how quickly the camera can take shots in a burst. Using a format that's much more computationally intensive will probably slow that down (although that might be balanced by decreased usage of bandwidth to the storage card), and thus make such cameras less attractive. On the other hand, the fact that this is just a specialized usage of the VP8 video codec means that the combination of still and video capture in a single device is much more elegant architecturally.

[Renegade]

IE Below 50%

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