Re: WebP, anyone using it?

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

> I find it odd, and somewhat contradictory, that there's an argument for the stance on negotiating *filetype* being "do it on the server" when the existence of <picture> at all is because we decided that we should negotiate *file URI* on the client side. How does that square up? Why are these different?

Because we jumped the gun with <picture>. We put the cart before the horse and didn't consider the whole gamut of solutions in the space. Where the negotiation happens matters, but not as much as getting "responsive images" first.  

As I said previously, the solution that finally ends up in browsers (if any) just needs to meet our use cases and requirements: it does not matter if it's with <img>, <picture>, <object> or <banana>.   

Our legacy is, first, articulating the problem space (which we have successfully done, in as far as img@srcset was spawned from the community's voice, as was <picture>).  

Yes, the CG will continue to work on <picture>, but we have to convince people that our use cases and requirements are valid first.

(i.e., forget about <picture> and ing@srcset all together for now… pretend we have no solutions at all… just a problem we want to solve and we are trying to convince other people that this is a problem worth solving).     
  
> I'm not following the PNG argument. How many years did it take to get usable Alpha PNG after the PNG spec came out? 6? 7?  

It was about 10 years. Full history here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Web_browser_support_for_PNG

That's not uncommon. Studies by the IEEE have shown that standardization, on average, takes about 5 years. This does not include uptake in the wild.   
> Have any of you used animated PNG's in a web browser recently? No? Why are you still using GIF for this, when the PNG spec allows for animation?

Animations in PNG are a relatively recent addition. To be clear "PNG itself does not support animation at all. MNG is an extension to PNG that does".  
> It's because it's not supported properly. Even after many years. Why isn't it supported properly? Because no one uses it. Why? ... Aaaand there we go with the chicken and egg again.

It might just be that not that many people need to animate PNGs… when they can animate GIFs (animated GIFs have a particular aesthetic quality).    
>  
>  
> PNG is not a success. It's an illustration of how incredibly long it takes for a file format to get *partial* support in a broad base of browsers. Being able to allocate fallback types should help alleviate this.
The fact that they are supported across browsers and developers rely on the format daily means it is a success. Standards take a long time to propagate. Taking years is not a measure of failure.  
   
--  
Marcos Caceres

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 16:31:32 UTC