- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
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Webp is pretty great actually. Supporting a 32bit alpha channel means I’ve actually managed to reduce file sizes of what were formerly PNGs by something like 80%, which drastically improved performance (and the size of my project). I don’t get where the complaint of image quality came from either, as it seems to perform better than JPEG at the same file size.
The worst part is that you missed the real problem with the format: the CPU overhead (and therefore the energy cost) of handling the file. A high-traffic site can dramatically increase the energy required for the images processed by the thousands/millions of clients in a single day, which places a drain on the grid and emits more CO₂ (yes, this is really a thing that people measure now).
Basically Google invented the format to externalise their costs. Now, rather than footing the bill for bigger datacentres and greater bandwidth, they made everyone else pay for decompression.
There are situations where the compression can benefit end users as well, such as loading less image data on a capped cellular plan. Transmission of data is not necessarily free for the recipient, either.
I’d prefer any other format on the sole basis of “not maintained by <insert Corposcum>”.
Incompatible with every website in which browser? It works for years in both Chrome and Firefox. Is this a meme for Safari users only?
The fact that Google invented this format is the most annoying thing about webp, but the complaints in this image haven’t been an issue for a very long time in my experience.
Most browsers support it, but most web apps, including some Google Suite stuff ironically, don’t support uploading a webp.
I’ve never had a single issue with webp on Linux or Android. This must be a MS/Apple problem if anything
…that also has arbitrarily small dimension restrictions.
TIL, how random
How I found out: Honey, I shrunk the scroll
At least animated WEBP is kind of good; APNGs have huge file sizes and are not widely supported.
Still, this meme made me laugh.
I thought webp was supposed to be smaller at the same loss-level as jpeg? Also, doesn’t it have a lossless mode too? Compatibility is an issue.
Lossless webp actually has slightly better compression than PNG.
Depending on the image in question, lossless webp can have enormous savings. I have in mind screenshots from OpenRCT2 where you can save the whole park in one image. Because that image will have a limited, sharp color palette webp lossless can work magic on it compared to the source .png. In fact in that case it also massively out-performs webp lossy.
Probably would work well on OpenTTD for similar reasons.
Honestly, there’s a bit of an “if I had a nickel” meme for open source reverse engineered clones of Chris Sawyer tycoon games, although it would be 3 nickels rather than the traditional 2 due to OpenLocomotion.
Webp and avif are nice, but I think their inherent base in a video codec makes them a bit funny, e.g. lack of progressive decoding. I await our jxl future. Jpeg is dated and we can do a lot better than a format defined in the early 90s, as venerable as that format may be.
It’s like holding onto mp3 when aac and opus exist, or mpeg2 when hevc exists. The only benefits of the old stuff is less computation required, which only matters if you are using some seriously primitive hardware in 2025.
