Re:Google set to deprecate JPEG XL support in Chrome 110
by bawolff on Monday October 31, 2022 @03:46PM
(#33411780)
> Twenty years ago, PNG wasn't really supported by any popular browsers of the day, but it showed its capabilities (especially compared to GIF) and was eventually incorporated. I'm assuming that you'll also say to me "You planned to move your entire business to a feature that has thus far never been shipped by any browser?"
That's rewriting history a bit. There was a long gap between 1997 when png was added and when people started to really use it. A lot of it due to issues with transparency in internet explorer.
But yes, if you in 1996 said you were moving your entire business to png, i would similarly think that is an odd move.
More generally moving your business to something that doesn't exist yet is usually pretty dangerous. Moving your business to something that both doesn't exist and that nobody has promised to for sure implement seems downright risky.
In a more serious manner, JXL has features that both WebP and AVIF don't. Lossless images simply compress better with JXL than WebP (and if you in these circles you know to not bother with AVIF's lossless mode - even PNG beats AVIF in that arena). I know Google uses near-lossless images for their icons, but near-lossless wouldn't cut when it comes for medical diagnostics or meteorological uses. It has progressive loading, which WebP and AVIF don't really have. Speaking of near-lossless, WebP don't support 4:4:4 chroma subsampling while AVIF technically does but no encoder AFAIK focuses on it. Also, WebP only allows 16,384 pixels per side and AVIF only allows 65,536 pixels per side (which to be fair is the same as the original JPEG), while JXL allows 1,073,741,824 pixels per side (which is ludicrous, but considering that JPEG's 65,536 pixels per side was ludicrous at the time is good for future-proofing).