I don’t know what a .webp file is but I don’t like it. They’re like a filthy prank version of the image/gif you’re looking for. They make you jump through all these hoops to find the original versions of the files that you can actually do anything with.

  • Kabe@lemmy.world
    202·
    1 year ago

    The format actually has a lot of benefits - it supports transparency, animation, and compresses very efficiently. So it could theoretically replace GIF, JPG, and PNG in one fell swoop.

    The downsides are that many apps don’t currently support it and that it’s owned by Google.

    Personally I use webp for images that are not intended to share (e.g. banners and images on my blog), but stick to JPG/PNG for sending to other people.

    • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
      127·
      1 year ago

      and that it’s owned by Google.

      I mean yes, but it’s patent irrevocably royalty free (so long as you don’t sue people claiming WebM/P as your own/partially your own work), so it’s effectively owned by the public.

      Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer implementations of the WebM Specifications, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by implementation of the WebM Specifications. If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any implementation of the WebM Specifications constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under the License for the WebM Specifications shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. “WebM Specifications” means the specifications to the WebM codecs as embodied in the source code to the WebM codecs or any written description of such specifications, in either case as distributed by Google.

      Source: https://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/

      (But Dark, that’s WebM not WebP! – they share the same license: https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/g/webp-discuss/c/W4_j7Tlofv8)

        • Gerula@lemmy.world
          13·
          1 year ago

          You could still be on the fence. It’s Google so for sure it has the possibility of tracking or some other user exploiting bullshit feature but we haven’t figure it out yet.

            • minorninth@lemmy.world
              36·
              1 year ago

              It’s also just an open file format. Anyone could implement it, and in fact I found dozens of completely independent implementations of webp decoders on GitHub in various languages.

              There really is no secret ulterior motive in this case.

              • _pete_@lemmy.world
                11·
                1 year ago

                There really is no secret ulterior motive in this case.

                Sort of. Smaller images mean it’s less work for Google to crawl and index them, if every image is 40% smaller then that’s potentially saving them millions a year in storage and bandwidth costs.

                So, yea, it’s better for the web but it also massively benefits them.

                • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
                  3·
                  1 year ago

                  Well, they crawl and index anyways. I see no harm done with .webp. One of my friends said with .webp you can’t save an image because it stops you from doing that somehow? I’m unsure, maybe true maybe not.

    • Laticauda@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I wouldn’t have an issue with them if they weren’t so incompatible with most of the programs and sites I like to use. It makes them super inconvenient to work with. I know some apps are catching up and supporting them, but it feels like the adaptation is slow and patchy which makes it difficult to know which programs will support webp at some point and when.

          • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.ee
            11·
            1 year ago

            libpng refused to accept it

            mozilla made it because it suited their needs; and libpng (the organisation behind png, and who make the standard png decoder) refused to add compatibility, insisting on mng instead. mng was bad, so nobody used it; and apng was great, but require mozillas version of the decoder so systems couldn’t use both the official version and the apng supporting version together

              • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.eeEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                partly, i don’t think it was just that. mng did have considerable benefits over apng at the time; but it was a solution looking for a problem. i think they wanted it to succeed because they’d poured time into it, but nobody wanted to support it (mozilla, the only browser to support it to my knowledge, dropped support eventually because the mng decoder was bigger than every other image decoder in firefox put together)

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            To add to the reply you got, WebP is lossy. Meaning that WebP files are smaller. APNG only added animation and nothing else.

      • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
        5·
        1 year ago

        mp4 isn’t generally for images.

        Yes you can convert, it’s just that many existing tools may not presently support webp. If you just want a quick & dirty meme you can always screen cap.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
          2·
          1 year ago

          The fun thing is heif is actually effectively single frame of h.265 video because the amount of work that’s gone into making h.265 space efficient also happens to work really well for efficienct compression of individual frames of video aka images