Your opinion on the .webp format

[TheFrugalGamer]

For those who aren't familiar, .wepb is an image format developed by Google that boasts better compression than JPEG and PNG and can also support animations. It was originally introduced in 2010, but recently has been gaining popularity (I haven't yet found out why, but may have to do with Chrome taking over in the Browser wars). A good number of people across the retroweb aren't fond of the format and prefer to use the older ones--I've seen buttons here and there like the "No thanks NFTs" that say "No Wepb" and similar. While I agree it's annoying having to switch to a new image format, I'm kind of torn on how I feel about it overall.

The compression on it is much better, so for those who are concerned about their webpages being lightweight and quick to download, wepb has an obvious advantage. While for those who want their work viewable in older or more esoteric browsers might not like it because of its relatively limited support.

Still others see it as more evidence of Google taking over the web, but if I'm not wrong, I did check and the license for the format doesn't seem to be overly restrictive.

What do you think? Do you like or use the new format?

[Necrosia]

Both professionally and hobby-wise I haven't yet found a need to compress something so much that using webp became a necessity or made a significant difference.

As a hobbyist digital archivist tho I dislike it just a little bit because windows is not fully optimized to work with it, so I will have this huge folder of images and there's a couple of files there that don't show the thumbnail because they are webp. I already have enough problems with psd previews since windows decided they hate it and now I have to worry about webp too =P It may all be a question of time for I recall that when png was becoming mainstream firefox didn't allow to save png files, they were turned into transparent files.

[Cobra!]

I'm not a fan of it at all. It was made by Google, which automatically makes me wary of it.

I like to rip songs from CD on iTunes, and I like to grab covers of the song online I add them to the ripped songs, but it doesn't support webp, and some files I find are webp.

I feel like webp is to images what amp is to HTML, where it does optimise the formats, but it does give Google control over the format in question, and they get to call the shots. A lot like what they did with Google Chrome. Otherwise why would a publicly traded for-profit company make and release a new format and just distribute it for free?

[kandeez]

Okay so I did yearbook for my school which was great and I loved it and I was in charge of literally getting everyone's images uploaded into the yearbook and let me tell you every single time I got a .webp image I was tempted to just ignore it i may or may not have done this to some when it came down to the wire but shhhhh. It feels like nothing accepts it, like I can't even open it on my computer when I get them and definitely can't open it in any program to resave it as a .jpg or .png so I was always stuck uploading it onto random sites and praying they can convert the images without absolutely destroying the quality or downloading a virus in the process.
I literally don't even know what makes an image .webp but when I'm getting images through email it feels like most of them are .jpg but then one or two will randomly be .webp and its just obnoxious and I hate how its practically impossible to change it out of that format to use the photo.

[Necrosia]

I feel like webp is to images what amp is to HTML, where it does optimise the formats, but it does give Google control over the format in question, and they get to call the shots. A lot like what they did with Google Chrome. Otherwise why would a publicly traded for-profit company make and release a new format and just distribute it for free?

This alone is a solid argument to dislike webp and not plaining on using it any time soon.

[brisray]

I have no problems at all using newer formats like webp. Last year I felt browser support was wide enough and been around long enough for me to start using it on my sites and new images I add are in the format. Photoshop opens and edits them just fine, and Windows doesn't have a problem showing the thumbnails. GIMP may still have a couple of problems with the format, but I don't use it and the posts I've read about its problems are a few years old now.

Newer formats like HEIC and AVIF aren't worth using yet as the browser support isn't there, especially for HEIC.

What you can do with the SVG format is pretty cool, especially once you stop thinking of it as just a vector image format and more of an XML document.

[tarraxahum]

I have a browser extention installed that automatically lets me convert webp images into jpg or png before saving. That should tell you enough 

Sure, the thumbnails are showing, but actually opening them up is inconvenient (they usually pop up in the browser instead of the Photo Viewer by default), and Clip Studio, which is my main art program (and a lot of stuff I download are references) doesn't open them, they don't get properly recognized as images by some messengers which is annoying when you're trying to just send a quick pic and not a file, etc etc.

I didn't dig too deep into this, so I can't really comment on Google or such, but after Tumblr implementing .gifv and some other sites suddenly using something called .pnj and then .webp it just all feels like come kind of a war on users being able to interact with images easily.

Maybe those formats are also for compression but honestly I'd personally just rather wait for a slower site to load.

[Memory]

I am skeptical of all """open""" technology promoted by economic actors which really shouldn't have open technology in their best interests, so I tend to be against it.

Plus, I like using old technology and that means it's not compatible.

[Cele]

I do not like it because I try to save an image online that was originally a png or jpeg or gif and now the website turned it to webp and when I save it, it gets totally broken and can't be viewed on any program because the format doesn't match what it's supposed to be and it gets corrupted.

[Inkerlink]

It feels like nothing accepts it,

I have a browser extention installed that automatically lets me convert webp images into jpg or png before saving. That should tell you enough 

This is my main problem with it. I'm fine with new formats, but a lot of websites still don't accept .webp for upload, and it's made saving images off Google Image search a pain since they convert a lot of pics to webp. I use a converter like tarraxahum since it's just not a viable alternative yet.

[Melooon]

Is it weird to say that it doesn't feel like a real format? It feels like a container.. A PNG feels like data that has been formatted into PNG format! It's real and tangible, but webp feels like a hollow box that just happens to contain image data, but I don't really trust the solidity of the data?

I have absolutely no idea why I feel like that or why it gives me that impression.. I did try using it on my site once because I actually do find myself needing extreme compression quite often; however it ended up breaking on some browsers, the neocities render could not display it correctly and overall I just found my self backpedalling pretty hard and having to redo things as PNGs.. after that, I don't think I'll be trying it again any time soon. 

[brisray]

There's some interesting reasons for not using webp images, some I agree with, others not so much.

I can't help it, and I really do not mean to disrespect anyone, but I find some of them amusing. Back in the day, exactly the same arguments were used about GIFs when big bad Compuserve who were if not the absolute rulers of what was happening on the internet, very close to it and invented the format. The intention was to release it for free, but if you created them you were supposed to pay for licenses because they used LWZ compression technology.

Compuserve GIF Licensing Agreement

Burn All GIFs - not now, but when I first started writing websites that was the call.

[Frost Sheridan]

Is it weird to say that it doesn't feel like a real format? It feels like a container.. A PNG feels like data that has been formatted into PNG format! It's real and tangible, but webp feels like a hollow box that just happens to contain image data, but I don't really trust the solidity of the data?

i feel the same way, so i totally understand what you mean. i think it's because webp files can contain either lossless or lossy compressed data, and there's no immediate indication as to which method any given webp image might be using. a PNG file will always contain PNG-formatted data which is inherently lossless, and a JPG file will always contain JPG-formatted data which is inherently lossy, but a webp file can just contain...whatever really.

[appleAlc]

Is it weird to say that it doesn't feel like a real format? It feels like a container.. A PNG feels like data that has been formatted into PNG format! It's real and tangible, but webp feels like a hollow box that just happens to contain image data, but I don't really trust the solidity of the data?

utterly & whole-heartedly agree. It just feels...extraneous

[Memory]

Thank you for that story, Brisray! History teaches us the same things over and over again... for example Gopher (HTTP competitor) getting wrecked over license fees, so said Tim Bernes-Lee in his book. But that means, that GIF got popular, despite all these software patents being in place and only being dropped in 2004?
MP3 good "stolen" by the web as far as I know. The license keepers failed to get the free stuff like LAME out of the way. And so happy CD ripping was unstoppable.

What will happen to WEBP? Will my static image files now spy on the users? If so, I'd like to know which servers to block in the firewall. Despite evil Google doing it... I think most of their open standards didn't go that far to be that offensive. However the possibilites of full complete surveillance, especially looking at their browser market monopoly, was never bigger than now, so one update to the file specs and boom?

Also, what a laughable discussion about file size! 99% of the web developers have no clue about optimising images by reducing resolution or their palette to 256 colours. For let's say, 50% of the images, you wouldn't notice any difference, but have the potential to save an Eighth of the file size at minimum. I'd prefer the people educate themselves first before screaming for new technology. Also, when one ton of Javascript fills up the site, the images weren't the problem...