Mozilla Rejects WebP Image Format, Google Adds It

icebraining writes with a link to Ars Technica's look at the recent rejection of WebP by Mozilla Developer Joe Drew."Building mainstream support for a new media format is challenging, especially when the advantages are ambiguous. WebM was attractive to some browser vendors because its royalty-free license arguably solved a real-world problem. According to critics, the advantages of WebP are illusory and don't offer sufficient advantages over JPEG to justify adoption of the new format. (...) 'As the WebP image format exists currently, I won't accept a patch for it. If and when that changes, I'll happily re-evaluate my decision!' wrote Mozilla developer Joe Drew in a Bugzilla comment.'" However, as the article explains, Google sees enough value in WebP to add it as a supported image format for Picasa.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we need yet another image format?

Why NOT?

[bradgoodman]

That mere fact that I am reading this article indicates that WebP has enough momentum to potentially be useful. The fact that other browser(s) are adding support is even more relevant. So the real question I believe is what wouldn't they add it? It's not costing anything, and (apparently) it's already been developed. So what's the issue?!

Re:alpha transparency

[Derek Pomery]

Amen. When I first heard about this format I was excited. I thought finally we had a lossy image format that would have an alpha channel. I was shocked to discover this was not the case, that it was basically just a static frame of video, with nothing else.

It offers little to no advantage over JPEG.

I'm still bitter over JNG getting killed off. It is possible to hack around the lack of a good JNG using 2 JPEGs (one for the alpha) plus a bit of javascript and a , and this can even be styled in CSS with mozElement and the slightly less flexible webkit alternative. But I have to say, overall, I'm cheering for Microsoft's apparently open JPEG XR standard.

Never thought I'd be saying *that* :)

Re:Good

[Dracos]

Imagine if, instead of DVD, we would have had another Betamax vs. VHS war. (Call it DVD vs. BetaDVD.)

You mean like HD-DVD vs BluRay?

Re:Why?

[GoRK]

You would be surprised; JPEG2000 is used extensively by high-compression PDF. As a standalone image format it's pretty lousy but for scanned documents it's actually really great. We have literally millions of pages stored this way where I work.