Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.social
Aug 25, 2026, 8:05 AMIt's really weird that the response to JPEG XL shipping is "yesss fuck WebP!"
Like, we've had AVIF for years, and it outperforms JPEG XL in almost all web use-cases.
Replies
Filip Hracekfiliph@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:12 AM@jaffathecake Wait, people dislike .webp? Why? Is it because of compatibility? (I do remember being annoyed when webp started to become prominent but yet wasn't supported by OSes, so opening .webp images was way more painful than .jpg/.gif/.svg. But that was just a knee-jerk reaction — it had nothing to do with the format itself.)
GNU/Knoppersgnuplusknoppers@troet.cafeAug 25, 2026, 9:03 AM@filiph @jaffathecake yes
Tom Schusterevilpie@hachyderm.ioAug 25, 2026, 8:13 AM@jaffathecake normal users should have never had to care to about image formats at all. That was a mistake with webp that somehow was never taken seriously.
- GNU/Knoppersgnuplusknoppers@troet.cafeAug 25, 2026, 9:14 AM
@evilpie @jaffathecake WebP solved the "use PNGs for graphics and transparencies, jpeg for photos and GIF for small animations"-problem.
The only problem with WebP was not doing enough outreach to Adobe to convince them to support it in Photoshop 
data0data0@indieweb.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:15 AM@jaffathecake I guess this is just good old Google vs. Mozilla tribalism?
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:25 AM
@data0 both AVIF and JPEG XL are primarily developed by Google teams.
David Schmidtindividual8@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:19 AM@jaffathecake I believe major social media platforms are a key factor holding back AVIF adoption.
- David Schmidtindividual8@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:55 AM
@jaffathecake If browser vendors began phasing out legacy image formats, it would accelerate the adoption of modern alternatives.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:58 AM
@individual8 this will never happen. Compatibility is way more important.
- David Schmidtindividual8@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:06 AM
@jaffathecake If browser vendors aren’t the ones driving the impulse toward modern image formats, who actually takes the lead? Without clear direction and coordination, adoption just fragments in random directions for arbitrary reasons.
James Henstridgejamesh@aus.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:23 AM@individual8 @jaffathecake You see sites like YouTube fairly aggressively adopting new video codecs. The marginal bandwidth savings per-stream add up when you look at the whole user base.
The same kind of economics could make sense for a service that primarily serves images.
As a downside, web browsers will be adding ~ 10 bytes to the Accept header of image HTTP requests, no matter whether the website can serve the format. Hopefully that turns out to be worth it.
- David Schmidtindividual8@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 11:49 AM
@jamesh @jaffathecake My guess is it comes down to compute cost vs. bandwidth. The platforms definitely have an interest in better formats, but AVIF is notoriously CPU-heavy to encode.
Saving a few dozen kilobytes on an image that might only get viewed a couple hundred times probably doesn't offset the extra server compute and ingest latency. Someone – especially at Meta – likely ran the numbers and figured that, at least for now, the trade-off simply isn't worth it.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 11:56 AM
@individual8 @jamesh I think the encode-cost info out there is out of date (and came from JPEG XL folks in the first place)
Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊brucelawson@vivaldi.netAug 25, 2026, 8:30 AM@jaffathecake It's because "XL" in Roman numerals is bigger than the "VI" that's in "AVIF". Simple psychology.
Patrick H. Laukepatrick_h_lauke@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:40 AM@brucelawson @jaffathecake JPEG XXX for porn images
kolyakolya@social.cologneAug 25, 2026, 8:33 AM@jaffathecake what does JPEG XL "shipping" mean? will it be supported by my OS and every image editor after shipping? because that was the whole problem with webp as far as I can see.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:37 AM
@kolya I'm talking about https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/08/intent-to-ship-jpeg-xl/
- kolyakolya@social.cologneAug 25, 2026, 8:44 AM
@jaffathecake right, that's a technical description of the format. and I applaud the efforts to develop a new image format. but my point is that releasing the format and even integrating it in chrome and firefox isn't the biggest task. webp suffered from user acceptance and so will other new formats if there isn't a broad cross industry alliance to turn them into a fully supported standard. does such an alliance exist now?
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:54 AM
@kolya sure, but you asked what I was talking about, and I'm talking about the announcement that it's shipping in Firefox and Chrome. That's what the "yesss fuck WebP!" has been in response to.
If they don't like WebP due to things other than browser support, then those things apply to JPEG XL too.
Anthonyanthony@indieweb.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:39 AM@jaffathecake When you say "outperform", I'm assuming you're talking about the one metric you mentioned on https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/08/intent-to-ship-jpeg-xl/: quality per bytes.
But there are other interesting aspects:
- Compute/storage savings by storing one format that can be served in another (JPEG to JPEG XL and vice versa)
- JPEG XL encoding faster than AVIF for on the fly conversion use cases (what CDN providers tend to do)- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 8:52 AM
@anthony do you have modern numbers on the encoding speed? Things have changed a lot there in my experience. Storage is cheap.
- Anthonyanthony@indieweb.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:00 AM
@jaffathecake I don't have anything besides https://cloudinary.com/blog/jpeg-xl-and-the-pareto-front#what_about_lossy_in_strong_jpeg_xl_compression_strong_ (and that's biased towards JPEG XL given the author).
I don't know if storage is still cheap given the current industry trend. Regardless, the compute costs are still a factor.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:02 AM
@anthony yeah, all the pro-JXL stuff seems to come from biased sources. My advice: Don't parrot the findings without verifying them yourself.
Some of the data is simply out of date too.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:04 AM
@anthony one of the JPEG XL leads also claimed the post-COVID layoffs wouldn't have happened if JPEG XL was adopted.
- Anthonyanthony@indieweb.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:10 AM
@jaffathecake Out of context, that reads like a joke to me.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:12 AM
- Anthonyanthony@indieweb.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:15 AM
@jaffathecake Wow… https://xcancel.com/jyzg/status/1592813739623219202#m is quite a claim as well…
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 9:17 AM
@anthony discourse around JPEG XL has a habit of getting very weird very quickly. I was recently called a racist for enquiring about JPEG XL use-cases https://github.com/web-platform-dx/developer-signals/issues/215#issuecomment-4930663101
Aug 25, 2026, 9:23 AM@jaffathecake @anthony yikes.
- Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊brucelawson@vivaldi.netAug 25, 2026, 10:48 AM
@jaffathecake @anthony The only sane way to solve this is to get JXL Hater Jake and these JXL Lovers to duke it out in cage fight.
Aug 25, 2026, 12:39 PM@brucelawson @jaffathecake @anthony I am all in favour of this approach. A fight is the way forward. Enough talk! We need... a little less conversation, a little more action
- Aug 25, 2026, 12:48 PM
@brucelawson @jaffathecake @anthony i would pay good money to watch this video for real, incidentally
Jan van Hellemond :mastodon:jvhellemond@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 1:32 PM@brucelawson @jaffathecake @ppk Hmm, I remember the last time you suggested something like that: https://vimeo.com/150121414
Aug 25, 2026, 1:38 PM@jvhellemond @brucelawson @jaffathecake What was this about? I vaguely remember the occasion once you pointed it out, but I can't for the life of me remember what we argued about.
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 1:43 PM
- Aug 25, 2026, 1:43 PM
@jaffathecake @jvhellemond @brucelawson Ah, right, NOW I remember!
- Jan van Hellemond :mastodon:jvhellemond@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 2:07 PM
@ppk @brucelawson @jaffathecake I only remember sourcing the boxing kit and it mysteriously disappearing after the event...
- Jake Archibaldjaffathecake@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 2:28 PM
@jvhellemond @ppk @brucelawson nuthin' to do with me!
- GNU/Knoppersgnuplusknoppers@troet.cafeAug 25, 2026, 9:10 AM
@jaffathecake I mean it's mostly about adoption and compatibility, I believe and because of macOS JpegXL already has a lead over Avif in terms being supported in programs like Affinity of Photoshop.
Ease of adoption seems to be symmetrical: it's very easy to support Avif for a web browser, since it has to ship a decoder for video anyways, yet most publishing tools don't already do that and seem more comfortable including JpegXL instead 
Brandon Jonestojiro@mastodon.socialAug 25, 2026, 2:01 PM@jaffathecake As far as I know the main reason people disliked WebP is because it made it harder for them to download and use images because their OS/tools didn't have support yet. Do people think that JPEG XL is magically gonna skip that part because it has JPEG in the name?
William O'Connellwilliamoconnell@mas.toAug 25, 2026, 3:30 PM@tojiro Some people definitely think that but mostly I think the sort of person that says they don't like WebP doesn't really know what it is and doesn't know what AVIF or JPEG XL is either.
Aug 25, 2026, 5:22 PM@jaffathecake I will never get tired of the endless Holy Wars on Image Codecs. pure entertainment
