News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024). Parent comment

Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by 0x20cowboy on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @04:17PM (#44303472)
I hate webp. Not for any legitimate technical reason like, but I often just want to download an image from the web for an image board or drop it in a diagram or ppt or for a joke and nothing works with that format. Nothing. Google image search is useless because of it.

Cmd+shift+4 is now the only way to grab an image out of a browser. Which is annoying.

It has made my life needlessly more complicated. I wish it would go away.

Maybe if browsers auto converted when you dragged ann image out of the browser window I wouldn’t care, but when I see webp… I hate.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by cosmic_cheese on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @04:40PM (#44303698)
Webp images are right up there with the fake transparent PNGs you come across in Google Images.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by nntwozz on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @04:49PM (#44303807)
I use ThumbsUp a free utility from https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/freeware to convert webp/heic or whatever inconvenient format.

Just drop the offending image onto the icon in the dock.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by nyanpasu64 on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @05:10PM (#44304000)
My working model is that WebP images are generally a lossy copy of a PNG or a generation-loss transcoding of a JPG image. I know that lossless WebP technically exists but nobody uses it when they're trying to save bandwidth at the cost of the user.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by frollogaston on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @06:54PM (#44304895)
Even if webp got better support later, I want it deprecated just as revenge for previously wasting my time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by jandrese on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @05:36PM (#44304221)
Worst case you can open it up in Paint and save as JPEG.

Also, I just checked and Powerpoint has no problem dropping in a webp image. Gimp opens it just fine. You are right that web forums are often well behind the times on this.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by reaperducer on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @04:15PM (#44312962)
Worst case you can open it up in Paint and save as JPEG

If he's using ⌘⇧4 to take a screenshot, he probably isn't going to open it in Microsoft Paint.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by adzm on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @06:27PM (#44304664)
Photoshop has native WebP support now too!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by encom on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @05:38PM (#44304233)
Often (in my experience) WebP is served as a bait-and-switch even if the link ends with .jpg. So I use Curl to fetch the file, and since Curl doesn't send "Accept: image/webp" unless you tell it to, the server just gives you what you ask for.

I once edited Firefox config to make it pretend to not support WebP, and the only site that broke was YouTube.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by MiddleEndian on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @07:59PM (#44305298)
lol I installed the firefox extension "Don't Accept image/webp" but I assume a lot of sites just ignore it
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by wang_li on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @04:29PM (#44303590)
On the classic macs they’re was a program called DropDisk. You could drag a disk image to it and it auto mounted it. That suggests a tool for you. Make a desktop app that you can drag and drop images on that converts them to jpeg and saves them in a folder.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by msephton on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @07:21PM (#44305047)
You can create this using Automator in a minute.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by jamiek88 on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @08:38PM (#44305541)
thumbsup app does exactly this.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by Salgat on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @04:50PM (#44303815)
Exactly, part of being a "superior format" is adoption. Until then, it's just another in a sea of potential.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by harry8 on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @09:25PM (#44305793)
Total agreement from me, I use this:

bin/webp2png:

    #!/bin/bash
    dwebp "$1" -o  "${1%%.webp}".png
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by socalgal2 on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @10:39PM (#44306193)
That's true of any new format. Until everything supports it it's not so great. iPhone saves .HEIC which I have to convert to something else to be useful. It's not everywhere (not sure it ever will be).

Windows didn't use to show .jpgs in the window explorer. I know becase I wrote a tool to generate thumbnail HTML pages to include on archive CDs of photos.

To solve this problem, some format has to "win" and get adopted everywhere. That format could be webp, but it will take 3-10 years before everything supports it. It's not just the OS showing it in it's file viewer. It's it's preview app supporting it. It's every web site that lets you upload an image (gmail/gmaps/gchat/facebook/discord/messenger/slack/your bank/apartment-rental-companies, etc..etc..etc..) I just takes forever to get everyone to upgrade.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by bapak on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @11:24PM (#44306402)
When does a format stop being new? WebP was introduced fifteen years ago.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by graealex on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @10:19AM (#44310142)
When it's widely adopted.

WebP gets pushed into your series of tubes without your consent, and the browser that you're most likely to use to view them just happens to be made by the same company that invented the codec. It's DivX and Real Media all over again.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by voidUpdate on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @03:54AM (#44307605)
If you want to do that so badly and hate webp so much, why not screenshot it? Then you don't have to care what format it's in on the browser
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by nottorp on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @06:40AM (#44308640)
Pretty sure I've managed to configure my Firefoxes to act as webp does not exist...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why JPEGs Still Rule the Web After 30 Years (2024) by graealex on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @10:21AM (#44310157)
It's a constant battle though to keep those browser extensions updated, especially since Google decided that extensions cut into their profits and they essentially made them useless.
[ Parent | on HN ]