Google’s speed page suggests this format and it seems to be a useful update to JPG…
Anyone using it? If so, what programs do you use to create/manage them.
I honestly don’t know why Google is pushing this so much.
- It does not compress as well as a JPG for photos.
- It does not compress as well as an SVG for icons.
- It is not supported in browsers very well.
- There are not many design apps that will export that format without a plugin of some kind.
But that’s Google for you.
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Browser Support USA = 45.79%
Interesting. I inspected a Wix site the other day and it was riddled with them, are you sure that figure is correct?
That is a pretty authoritative source I referenced. You could review their collection and analysis procedures. Google even references that source for
I doubt a typical WIX user would have the wherewithal to encode images into newer formats. So WIX might do it internally for them and use progressive enhancement where you check for support of a feature. When it does not exist, you fall back to one that is. Cloudflare, for example, has a feature on pro accounts where It will create enhanced versions of your images and serve them up when the browser supports them.
That would not currently work with webflow however, since the images are hosted on a webflow domain and CF won’t touch them.
This FAQ page from Google is a good source for review.
I’ve used it on a couple websites (not Webflow sites), but only when I’m able to dynamically serve a WebP or Jpeg depending on the browser. It usually does reduce the page size by a bit though.
If you have no way to detect the browser being used before loading the image then don’t use WebP. Use the more widely used formats.
Oh absolutely, I can’t believe Wix end users would add files in that format, but I wonder why Wix are converting them when there’s such poor browser support.
The same reason Cloudflare does. Saves them money. Images are a large part of site bandwidth. If there is 50% support, it could save them a fortune.
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