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Firefox To Support Google's WebP Image Format For a Faster Web (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the marching-forward dept.

Firefox has joined Google's WebP party, another endorsement for the internet giant's effort to speed up the web with a better image format. From a report: Google revealed WebP eight years ago and since then has built it into its Chrome web browser, Android phone software and many of its online properties in an effort to put websites on a diet and cut network data usage. But Google had trouble encouraging rival browser makers to embrace it. Mozilla initially rejected WebP as not offering enough of an improvement over more widely used image formats, JPEG and PNG. It seriously evaluated WebP but chose to try to squeeze more out of JPEG. But now Mozilla -- like Microsoft with its Edge browser earlier this week -- has had a change of heart. "Mozilla is moving forward with implementing support for WebP," the nonprofit organization said. WebP will work in versions of Firefox based on its Gecko browser engine, Firefox for personal computers and Android but not for iOS.

1 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Image formats aren't the bottleneck. by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Compression levels and file size aren't the current limitations on 'web speed' as such.

    The limits are REALLY, REALLY easy to detect, if you try any sizable set of major websites with and without various levels of ad blocking and script blocking.

    The limitation is servers placed in between users and the content they want, by marketing company servers that demand to be parsed before loading.

    And marketing companies don't place much priority on 100% minimal load times, compared to showing greater statistics on what makes them money.

    That's what kills the traffic flow - like a small number of bad actors can slow any traffic system. When those actors are left in front of the others, with no way to get around them, all the traffic is slowed.

    This is a fix - but it's very much not a general fix for what most affects people's experience online.

    Adblock and script blocking are that for now - but bypassing a >1ms marketing server delay would be the more proper fix if you wanted ads to keep paying for things.

    Have marketing companies absolutely lose their chance to show ads for any, ANY delay would fix their priorities, and fix the web for those that want to keep it an ad-loaded experience.

    Ad/script blocking works for everyone else.

    Ryan Fenton