For you digital image buffs and Web developers

[YosemiteSam]

Google has made some huge head way in WebP image format. Including lossless images, alpha channel (transparency), and animated images (like .gif files). All with better compression that the GIFs, PNG, JPEGs, etc.

You can check out their blog post about it on Google official blog.

 

[Reality]

Google has made some huge head way in WebP image format. Including lossless images, alpha channel (transparency), and animated images (like .gif files). All with better compression that the GIFs, PNG, JPEGs, etc.

You can check out their blog post about it on Google official blog.

Sounds promising but the only problem is how long it will take for most browsers to support it. I love the PNG format but it took years for it to gain wide acceptance even back when unisys/compuserve were threatening to go after sites who used their then-copyrighted GIF format. JPG has its place but for most web-interface images, I'm shocked that PNG is not the primary image format used.

I am quite open to a new format though as the one downside to PNG is the lack of compression. You can optimize PNG images to get them smaller but that still does not compare with true compression support.

I can also see Apple and Microsoft dragging their feet to support a Google-created image format which will make it all but unusable.

I use Chrome as my main browser and as a developer, I wish more people did the same.

#reality

 

[YosemiteSam]

Sounds promising but the only problem is how long it will take for most browsers to support it. I love the PNG format but it took years for it to gain wide acceptance even back when unisys/compuserve were threatening to go after sites who used their then-copyrighted GIF format. JPG has its place but for most web-interface images, I'm shocked that PNG is not the primary image format used.

I am quite open to a new format though as the one downside to PNG is the lack of compression. You can optimize PNG images to get them smaller but that still does not compare with true compression support.

I can also see Apple and Microsoft dragging their feet to support a Google-created image format which will make it all but unusable.

I use Chrome as my main browser and as a developer, I wish more people did the same.

#reality

I agree. The good thing is if you combine Firefox and Chrome's usage, they account for 71% of all browser usage as of Oct 2011. Chrome's use is growing too.

At 71%, it probably won't take quite as long to adopt it. Especially with Android mobile devices being so wide spread and bandwidth a real issue in the mobile market.

PNG had an up hill battle when IE was king. Microsoft and Apple are a part of the whole MPEG-LA garbage. The last thing they wanted was any open format to become a standard. With them taking a back seat to Firefox and Chrome, they won't be able to provide too much resistance.