Re:FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format
by davej on Monday March 07, 2016 @08:50AM
(#11238806)
This! Especially with the web being increasingly consumed on low-powered mobile devices.
It's also not just about being faster than the network because the browser is probably simultaneously doing page layout, javascript parsing, image decompression and a ton of other things. Also more time spent decoding images is a drain on the battery.
Focusing solely on compression stats can be misleading, it's a balancing act. For example, I'm not sure being 0.7x smaller than PNG is much of a win if FLIF ends up being an order of magnitude slower. Perhaps it is still a win but it needs a bit more nuance in the analysis to reach that conclusion.
It's also not just about being faster than the network because the browser is probably simultaneously doing page layout, javascript parsing, image decompression and a ton of other things. Also more time spent decoding images is a drain on the battery.
Focusing solely on compression stats can be misleading, it's a balancing act. For example, I'm not sure being 0.7x smaller than PNG is much of a win if FLIF ends up being an order of magnitude slower. Perhaps it is still a win but it needs a bit more nuance in the analysis to reach that conclusion.