News Google targets JPEG with WebP

Fixed that for you

Welcome to bit, BTW

 

You're doing it wrong. Why would PNG's look terrible with pictures? It's a lossless format, forpngssake!

At best, it looks better, and at worst, it'd look the same.

 

+1


Though the chance of it being able to be used as a replacement for PNGs/JPGs in web layouts is probably very small..

 

Why? If it works and Google can get people on board with it as a standard, then it should work the same as any other graphics format. .jpg hasn't always been around either, an it's gotten pretty ubiquitous.

 

if IE does not support it it take bit of time to take off before its used (even this site does not use PNG's as far as i have seen) the default save format for most programs is jpg

but this is to more benefit the storage on the web servers and there bandwidth that they use, then the users who will be looking at the web sites

 

MS & IE is the problem

 

The way Google is taking over the world it won't be long before IE, Firefox etc will have updates so they can use it.

 

As a web dev I'm all for this. If only because newbie web devs tend to save *everything* in JPG format, even if GIF/PNG would be better for the particular image. If WebP can be the best of all worlds, at least it solves this little problem.

Of course there's also the bandwidth savings. Bandwidth isn't cheap. Lower server load too, I like that as well.

 

Sounds great As others have said, if it offers the best of JPG and GIF/PNG, it should be a good development.

 

Funny how the screenshot of that comparison is in jpeg.

 

Without alpha channel support it's as useful as PNG with IE 5.5. Which is to say not very

There are a lot of criticisms on WebP, on a sidenote, most of them rooted in the way VP8 produces compressed frames: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/...vp8-based-image-format-could-replace-jpeg.ars

Supposedly the result is a loss of detail and in general blurrier pictures than JPEG produces. And really, what happened to JPEG-2000 anyway? It was pretty nifty.

 

They'll have to offer something way, way better than 40% space saving for me to give a damn, let alone for me to change away from .jpg.

It isn't the JPG that's the problem, it's the people that don't resize or compress their photos at all! Considering this is a forum full of geeks, I can't believe the number of people who just throw a bunch of noisy 3000x2000 pix 4 MB .jpgs from their camera to threads and ask "what's wrong, the forum resizes them to fit the layout".

 

The other problem here is that Google is trying to overcome a longstanding incumbant. Not to say it can't be done, but when you've been the standard for 20 or so years, it makes for a bit of a fight when variety comes to town. Plus, implementation is going to be a pain in the ass. Part of the appeal of the jpeg is that it's universal. So what now, you'll need to install / develop a plugin for every browser / site / device / OS? Yikes.

And if nothing else, look at video formats. .mkv is freakin' awesome - multiple audio and video streams in one container who doesn't lose it's index if you look at it funny? Yes please. But is it standard? No. People still encode in rmvb ffs.

 

I refuse to even look at RMVB. It's either AVI or MKV Maybe OGM or MP4 if I'm feeling generous.

GIF did get replaced by PNG, though. But GIF is really limited with its 256 colour palette and such. PNG trounced it for being awesome

WebP versus JPEG? Meh...

 

that's more the forum fault for not auto cropping them (hint bit-tech) and the user not bothering to compress them

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thought jpeg replaced gif

 

GIF got replaced by PNG. JPEG is still in a league of its own. JPEG-2000 tried and failed to replace it. Serious artists use TIFF and such

 

think of a company like Amazon if they can replace all of their images with WebP they should save a small fortune in bandwidth / server load. i realise you probably will not notice the difference from our end but it will make a difference

 

PNG all the way

 

Nm.