Re: WebP, anyone using it?

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

> The point being this: looking for evidence of WebP is not the right thing to look for. That's not the problem I want to address, because it's not the problem we have. WebP's poor support is a symptom of the problem, and the problem is that our image-format support is binary. Which creates an environment that's hostile to development of new, more efficient, better quality file formats. Now and ever after. Because they can never get a foot in the door.

I don't agree with this (again, citing PNG). Any browser has the ability to indicate to a web app that is supports WebP through the Accepts: HTTP header. It's possible to set up content negotiation on the server side to deal with this.  

Also, the  problem cannot be isolated or blamed on one single point of failure: in your case, you are blaming the markup. Even if all browsers supported WebP, there might not be any tools that allow the creation of content (think SVG's failure to take off because no one can author it). 

There are lots of things that can paralyze a standard from reaching critical mass - markup issues is just one tiny part of the problem. 


-- 
Marcos Caceres

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 14:47:14 UTC