So as every time I read something decrying how webp is allegedly "annoying", the conclusion is that the problem was never about webp itself but the tooling and ecosystem to handle it
Firefox actually silently and automatically converts images to webp in some cases when you Save As them, with no option to revert to the format you see in the DOM. It’s fucking infuriating. I hate webp because the support is so spotty.
I don't think that's firefox doing it? I'd guess it's some CDNs doing the conversion. Or the URL says .jpg but when you look at the mimetype sent by the server it's actually webp. Extentions are meaningless for browsers.
Yeah it's purely the fault of the tens of thousands of application devs that have been too stupid to recognize the obvious and immense benefits of webp over existing widely adopted formats /s
Is there a real distinction? It can be a great format, but if actually using it sucks then in practice it's a pain to use/encounter. (I don't actually have this problem personally - all my apps seem to handle it fine - but the argument seems reasonable.)
Google aren't pushing WebP. Google Docs / Slides still don't support it.
I appreciate Google isn't a monolith, but that lack of consistency makes it really hard to shake the impression certain tribes within it are at war with each other.
It's not war, it's indifference. Why should Docs give a damn what Chrome's priorities are? The only reason they would is if there were effective leadership ensuring company-wide alignment, but there is no one filling that function.
Because if they did company wide alignment, you would kill their promotion pipeline. Want harmony? Then in Google you build your own app (see N+1 chat apps) to get that feature, get promoted and dump the project on someone else.
One forum I use does not embed webp links. They show up as links, period, and it's a damn waste of my time to convert. Small is beautiful unless your forum is run by two people, not having the time to update code all the time.
Many image links that work for search engines don't work for the site and I have to download and then upload to a host to get an embeddable image link.
So as every time I read something decrying how webp is allegedly "annoying", the conclusion is that the problem was never about webp itself but the tooling and ecosystem to handle it
Does Windows already display WebP files in File Explorer? :-|
It has done for some years
Yes. https://imgur.com/a/lRSM128
Firefox actually silently and automatically converts images to webp in some cases when you Save As them, with no option to revert to the format you see in the DOM. It’s fucking infuriating. I hate webp because the support is so spotty.
I don't think that's firefox doing it? I'd guess it's some CDNs doing the conversion. Or the URL says .jpg but when you look at the mimetype sent by the server it's actually webp. Extentions are meaningless for browsers.
I highly doubt that is what's happening. More likely the server is serving a webp under a .png filename or something.
I have observed the behavior you suspect many times.
It's not Firefox, it's the server. Edit and resend the request with header "Accept: image/jpeg" only and you'll most likely get a JPEG file.
Yeah it's purely the fault of the tens of thousands of application devs that have been too stupid to recognize the obvious and immense benefits of webp over existing widely adopted formats /s
Is there a real distinction? It can be a great format, but if actually using it sucks then in practice it's a pain to use/encounter. (I don't actually have this problem personally - all my apps seem to handle it fine - but the argument seems reasonable.)
Google aren't pushing WebP. Google Docs / Slides still don't support it.
I appreciate Google isn't a monolith, but that lack of consistency makes it really hard to shake the impression certain tribes within it are at war with each other.
It's not war, it's indifference. Why should Docs give a damn what Chrome's priorities are? The only reason they would is if there were effective leadership ensuring company-wide alignment, but there is no one filling that function.
Because if they did company wide alignment, you would kill their promotion pipeline. Want harmony? Then in Google you build your own app (see N+1 chat apps) to get that feature, get promoted and dump the project on someone else.
Avif.
Especially for animated images. Comparing webp or avif sizes to gif is easily a factor of five to ten when animated.
Since all modern browsers support AVIF, I'd skip WEBP and just use AVIF (possibly with a fallback for JPG/PNG).
One forum I use does not embed webp links. They show up as links, period, and it's a damn waste of my time to convert. Small is beautiful unless your forum is run by two people, not having the time to update code all the time.
Many image links that work for search engines don't work for the site and I have to download and then upload to a host to get an embeddable image link.
X doesn't support animated webp, slightly annoying.
Annoyingly Google voice doesn't support it at all, either. I've installed a firefox extension[0] that saves any image as .JPG,.PNG, or .WEBP
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/siat/