cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2207898

Did you ever hear the tragedy of WebP The Efficient? I thought not. It’s not a story the GIF gang would tell you. It’s an image legend.

WebP was a new format of pictures, so efficient and so lightweight, it could use modern compression to influence the web pages to actually load faster…

It had such a knowledge of the user’s needs that it could even keep transparency and animations from dying.

The power of modern computing is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

It became so widespread… The only thing we had to be afraid of, was people insisting on using formats from the 90’s, which eventually, of course, they did.

Unfortunately, we didn’t teach the noobs everything we knew about compression, then the noobs killed the format by converting it to PNG and sharing that.

Ironic. We could save the web from being too slow, but not from the users.

  • Lexica@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    40·
    2 years ago

    The only problem I have with .webp and .webm is that not that many applications support them and need to be converted first.

    • Droggl@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      13·
      2 years ago

      This. Many viewers still dont support it for some reason so despite all technical glory, effectively its often mostly a nuisance. Cmp ogg/vorbis and possibly countless other examples. Adoption is everything for web formats.

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      8·
      2 years ago

      No, there’s also the problem that they’re Google developed formats. I think an increasing number of us want to be done with Google as much as possible, and there are good alternatives that aren’t getting the support they need right now to give us that freedom.

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.worldOP
        4·
        2 years ago

        I understand that but we really fucking need to be moving from jpegif. MP3 and MPEG2 were commercial formats too (actually so was jpeg iirc?) and look where they got us. We just really need someone to get the ball rolling to start using newer formats.

    • WhoRoger@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Why are so many people using image viewers from 1993? Nothing against nostalgia, but…

    • WhoRoger@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      Kill him. Kill him now.

      Seriously… Please don’t. Or at least don’t ever share that shit back to the web. It gets even worse when people then rename the png to jpg and it’s a whole fucking mess. I’ve been trying to figure out where the hell all those bloated hi-res pngs all over the web come from, until I stumbled upon this answer.

      Just download an updated app that can read webp for crying out loud. Do people convert x265 to QuickTime too?

      Besides, everywhere where I’ve encountered webp in the wild, the image url has something like ?format=webp at the end, so you can just delete that and get the original, if you really have to.

      • TwanHE@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        It was on by default for me, but I’m also not downloading pictures to repost so it’s fine.

  • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.mlEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    Webp is just one more instace of Google trying to own the modern web.

    Give me JPEG XL or give me death, motherfuckers.

  • ChrislyBear@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    I’m against using a Google OS (Android, Chrome OS), to browse on a Google regulated web (Manifest V3), based on a Google protocol (Protobuf) loading pages via Google proxies (Google AMP) filled with Google Ads displayed using a Google format (webp, webm), while everything is recorded and fingerprinted to update my Google Ad Profile.

    No, thank you very much!

    More open formats, more open Internet! Down with Google!

  • macniel@feddit.deEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Webp… For web pictures. Then why are there webp files on my non web harddrives? Give me PNG, SVG, JPEG and GIFs. Not this ugly Google shit. I never liked it in the first place. And take your shitty webm with you.

  • empireOfLoveEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    You can also use the don’t accept images/webp addon so the browser will tell the site its “not capable” of displaying webp, and will usually fall back to a jpg or png alternative. Only works on some sites- lemmy is an exception as all directly uploaded images are stored exclusively in webp.