It seems like either
-
I get a
.webp
file when I don’t want it (downloading images) -
I try to use a
.webp
format, but it isn’t allowed (uploading images)
So who is trying to encourage people to use it, and who is trying to prevent adoption?
I’m constantly converting it with imagemagick and other tools
It’s being pushed by Google as a format exclusively designed for the web. It’s annoying as fuck because it just started showing up randomly and it’s annoying to use for the reasons you mentioned.
Interestingly enough, the first thing it did was put a speedbump in front of is downloading an image from a Google images search. Imagine that.
I think browsers are starting to convert it locally as saving images seems to be slowly returning to some kind of normal. Maybe.
I don’t think browsers are converting the file when you save. The proper way to implement webp in html is to also include the link to the jpg or png version of the file. So old browser that don’t support webp can still load the image. So the browser just selects the jpg version when you save the image.
It’s being pushed by Google. If a website includes webp it will have a better score on Google PageSpeed Insights, since webp files are smaller than jpg thus the page loads faster. The PageSpeed score is one of the metrics that Google uses to rank the website on Google search.
It’s why I love Google, they make the best stuff, can only recommend!
I like webp for space and bandwidth reasons (300 KB PNG -> 35 KB webp) but support among applications/services seems spotty.
Like, my phone’s gallery supports webp no problem. But Google Voice or my phone’s SMS app will not handle them at all. I don’t have a converter app, so I open it in gallery, take and then crop a screen shot if I need to send it to someone (crude but effective).
With Lemmy, a lot of admins force conversion of uploads to webp on the backend to save storage costs and reduce bandwidth. If you want to get a different format, such as png, you can add
?format=png
to the end of the image URL. That’s one of the options I’m working to add to my custom UI (download image as [webp, png, jpg] ) because I’ve run into the same problems as you when trying to share things from here.lossless png vs butchered webp is not a fair comparison.
It’s not, but for memes and shit, IDGAF about lossy vs lossless. I just don’t want to have to jump through hoops to text it to a friend.
And for image storage on my instance, I’m not paying for people to upload lossless images. They can take webp or not upload anything :P
I think they meant comparing with jpeg might have been a fairer comparison.
Layman’s suspicion: adoption is hard when nearly everyone and their uncle knows and supports gif/jpg/png. At least for most end consumers there’s no major advantage to adopting early. And in such a scenario most people adopt when they are forced to because everyone else adopted. So it’s a hen-egg problem.
Ideally when you introduce a new format you support both the old and new format concurrently over a long time to allow for a gradual transition. The major advantage of webp/avif is that they need less storage space for the same quality. However if you have to store everything in an extra format whilst also keeping the old ones you are completely reversing that storage advantage and now need even more storage volume than before.
As far as I can tell AVIF has much better prospects of being the future image format anyways. In the long run that is. Plus it’s open source and not just a single tech giant behind it. Suffers from the same slow adoption rates though.