I don’t even understand the point of webp. Why do we need to make pngs and jpegs smaller? Who has internet that can’t handle those files most of the time? It’s not like people are posting 500 mb images.
It’s not about the bandwidth and ability when you’re reducing file size. It’s the aggregate of doing so when the site has a large number of those files, multiplied by the number of times the files get pulled from a server.
It’s conserving size for the provider. Most commercial servers have metering.
A physical internet connection doesn’t have many issues as at all with bulkier formats, but cell networks – especially legacy hardware that is yet to be upgraded – will have more issues sending as much data (i.e. more transmission errors to be corrected and thereby use up more energy, whereas the power cost of transmission error correction for cabled networks is negligible).
Even when I have one bar, as long as I have a connection, I won’t have a problem with a 50k png. A screenshot on my 27" monitor is less than that. And the legacy hardware was designed with pngs and jpegs in mind because they didn’t have webp at the time. So that really doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s less about individual small screenshots (PNGs for example are pretty large with real photographs, which can take minutes to load with a bad connection) and more about multiple images on one site. User retention is strongly affected by things like latency and loading speed. The best way to improve these metrics is to reduce network traffic. Images are usually the biggest part of a page load.
Neither do I. I’ve heard so much from so many people about it being a ‘better’ extension in all these ways but I mean… it just comes off like audiophile-style conversations about how this specific record player with x speaker set allows for the warmth better than this other set that costs the same amount of money. That amount being your blood, various organs, and the life energies of everything in a 50 mile radius.
How is it better when no one fucking supports it?!
When your site serves each user 20+ images and you get millions of unique users a year, saving 25-35% on each image translates into a LOT of saved bandwidth
“No one supports it” because support doesn’t just happen overnight. These things happen slowly. Same way they did with jpg and png.
Sure, part of the “better” is the audiophile “better quality” thing. But the major point is that it’s objectively a better compression. Which means less data needs to be transfered, which means things go faster. Sure people claim they “don’t notice” an individual image loading, but you rarely load one image, and image loading is often the bulk of the transfer. If we can drop that by 30%, not only does your stuff load 30% faster, but EVERYONE does, which means whoever is serving you the content can serve MORE people more frequently. Realistically, it’s actually a greater than 30% improvement because it also gets other people “out of your way” since they aren’t hogging the “pipes” as long.
I don’t even understand the point of webp. Why do we need to make pngs and jpegs smaller? Who has internet that can’t handle those files most of the time? It’s not like people are posting 500 mb images.
It’s not about the bandwidth and ability when you’re reducing file size. It’s the aggregate of doing so when the site has a large number of those files, multiplied by the number of times the files get pulled from a server.
It’s conserving size for the provider. Most commercial servers have metering.
Cell connectivity.
A physical internet connection doesn’t have many issues as at all with bulkier formats, but cell networks – especially legacy hardware that is yet to be upgraded – will have more issues sending as much data (i.e. more transmission errors to be corrected and thereby use up more energy, whereas the power cost of transmission error correction for cabled networks is negligible).
Even when I have one bar, as long as I have a connection, I won’t have a problem with a 50k png. A screenshot on my 27" monitor is less than that. And the legacy hardware was designed with pngs and jpegs in mind because they didn’t have webp at the time. So that really doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s less about individual small screenshots (PNGs for example are pretty large with real photographs, which can take minutes to load with a bad connection) and more about multiple images on one site. User retention is strongly affected by things like latency and loading speed. The best way to improve these metrics is to reduce network traffic. Images are usually the biggest part of a page load.
Large companies that serve a ton of content. CDNs, image hosts, Google, Facebook, etc. 1% of their traffic adds up to a lot.
Also people in limited bandwidth situations - satellite links, Antarctica, developing countries, airplanes, etc.
Finally, embedded systems. The esp32 for example has 520kb of ram.
But maybe 500 people are posting 1 MB images? These concepts ain’t hard, mate.
Neither do I. I’ve heard so much from so many people about it being a ‘better’ extension in all these ways but I mean… it just comes off like audiophile-style conversations about how this specific record player with x speaker set allows for the warmth better than this other set that costs the same amount of money. That amount being your blood, various organs, and the life energies of everything in a 50 mile radius.
How is it better when no one fucking supports it?!
When your site serves each user 20+ images and you get millions of unique users a year, saving 25-35% on each image translates into a LOT of saved bandwidth
“No one supports it” because support doesn’t just happen overnight. These things happen slowly. Same way they did with jpg and png.
Sure, part of the “better” is the audiophile “better quality” thing. But the major point is that it’s objectively a better compression. Which means less data needs to be transfered, which means things go faster. Sure people claim they “don’t notice” an individual image loading, but you rarely load one image, and image loading is often the bulk of the transfer. If we can drop that by 30%, not only does your stuff load 30% faster, but EVERYONE does, which means whoever is serving you the content can serve MORE people more frequently. Realistically, it’s actually a greater than 30% improvement because it also gets other people “out of your way” since they aren’t hogging the “pipes” as long.