WEBP Image support

[ThePhleo | 2,210]

It's kinda annoying that WebP exists and is becoming a dominant image format, but can we add support for it by any chance?

[Sumez | 3,109]

The annoying thing about WebP is that there's still a surprisingly wide array of browsers/versions that don't support it. So you don't really want to provide a WebP image anywhere without also implementing a fallback solution, which is kind of a bother

[TrekMD | 1,498]

I hear you.  I end up changing the file extension to JPG, opening the file on Windows Pain 3D, and saving it as a jpg (overwriting the original file), so that is now a true JPG that can be more easily shared.

Edited May 24 by TrekMD

[Gloves | 12,078]

7 hours ago, Sumez said:

The annoying thing about WebP is that there's still a surprisingly wide array of browsers/versions that don't support it. So you don't really want to provide a WebP image anywhere without also implementing a fallback solution, which is kind of a bother

What this guy said. 

I'll take a look to see if there's a setting but there wasn't one before. 

[ZeldaFreak | 3,693]

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that WebPs fuckin' blow

[fcgamer | 4,866]

On 5/26/2024 at 2:39 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that WebPs fuckin' blow

Yup, I'm in agreement on this. 

[RH | 5,121]

I don't fully understand the point of them.  I've never looked into their use at all, but I assume everyone's agitation is the same as mine--properly saving them is tough.

I have to fire up an image editor, go to "Open", paste in the image URL into the File Select box and then open and save it from there, so I can save it as PNG or JPEG. So stupid. No one asked for this.

[Sumez | 3,109]

53 minutes ago, RH said:

I don't fully understand the point of them

The point is basically this

 

[RH | 5,121]

41 minutes ago, Sumez said:

The point is basically this

 

Oh, I'm well aware of that comic.  If you took the top 100 XKCDs that all tech workers should ever read, this is easily in the top 20.  It's truth.

[spacepup | 2,461]

The benefit is that it has a smaller file size comparatively to other formats for a similar looking image - which, on a macro scale, makes pages load faster and less bandwidth.  

They are annoying for sure and I'm not at all advocating for their use, but to answer your question, that is why they exist.

[RH | 5,121]

26 minutes ago, spacepup said:

The benefit is that it has a smaller file size comparatively to other formats for a similar looking image - which, on a macro scale, makes pages load faster and less bandwidth.  

They are annoying for sure and I'm not at all advocating for their use, but to answer your question, that is why they exist.

This would have been an issue up to 2005, maybe 2010.  WebP was announced in 2010, and of course, it takes time for features to become ubiquitous.  Certainly, you could argue that it's not ubiquitous, even now, and just pops up from time to time.  I know that I started noticing WebP, maybe, 3-4 years ago as a nuisance. It might be an arm-chair observation that's not true, but it's always felt like it was used where content sites tried to make it a bit more difficult to prevent people from saving their content.

I mean, I get that bandwidth, especially when it's distributed across millions of users, is a high expense.  But I don't think those 200x300 images on your news article are really consuming that much bandwidth.  Plus, if you do serve images, preloading thumbnails and only downloading a full image when a user clicks/taps on it will save plenty of bandwidth.  I can't imagine WebP helps that much in a day and age where we can easily stream 4k content, served up to millions of users.