Should I start using webp format?
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- SimonFFM
On February 1st, my new website will be up. Now, I wondered if I should convert all my JPGs to WEBP. I tried it out and it would save around 60% of data.
CanIUse says, 94% of all browsers support webp already (other than the avif format).
But I would like to hear your opinion on webp, please.
Should I go for webp or not?
- uan0
no u should not convert them...
but you should configure your server to serve them automatically if possible and serve jpgs if not.
it‘s done by the server on the fly in a normal setup.
- utopian2
Why not? Particularly if you are creating a new website for yourself and the new website is image heavy. Google will eventually reward you by indexing your website with a higher search ranking.
• First, simply compress all of your JPGs using the "batch process" on: www.tinypng.com
• Then convert all of your compressed JPGs to WebP using: https://www.freeconvert.com/jpg-…
Or download "Bulk Images to WebP Converter" from the Google store: https://chrome.google.com/websto…
Or If you are using the newest Wordpress, enable the WebP plugin and it will automatically generate WebP from your uploaded JPGs on the fly.
- tinypng does webp, prob best doing the conversion before compression no?kingsteven
- Yes compress your JPGs with tinypng and then connect them with tinypng to WebPutopian
- I have used many JPG compression tools and tinypng.com hands down does the best JPG compression (free or paid) on the web.utopian
- Yeah, why are you doing what amounts to two compression operations? That seems.. not quite right.Nairn
- Best practice would be to use the picture tag and use both WebP and also JPG file as a fallback.yuekit
- But yeah, I can vouch for the fact that your SEO in Google will improve, based on nothing more than using Google's image format (admittedly it is also faster).yuekit
- According to Google's new algorithm updates...they're trying to force everyone with a Website to conform to their new WebP format...and yeah fuck Google!utopian
- @Nairn I tried both ways with and without tinypng's JPG compression > WebP compression...and just using WebP compression. The results are...utopian
- ...much better when you compress a JPG and then convert WebP while using tinypng. The files size and file quality is superior.utopian
- BTW use Google's Lighthouse tool and just follow every suggestion they make and your SEO will improve. Using WebP is in there somewhere, but there areyuekit
- lots of other random things they want you to do from a technical perspective that most sites aren't doing.yuekit
- I'm so glad I don't have to develop websites and I can focus on graphic design alone. :)monospaced
- @monospaced or you're just too dumb to create websites
here some help: https://webflow.com/…grafician
- Nairn6
Fuck Google.
- Would you not be better off preparing for JpegXL? Webp's only worth it now if you're playing with animation or need an alpha channel.Nairn
- Does Safari support webp 100%? I know it was added only very recently and like it or not, Safari's critical. Probably moreso than fucking Chrome for you.Nairn
- < thishans_glib
- < And Fuck Safari as well.utopian
- Fuck Apple for only allowing Safari-based browsers on iPhone etc, but yes - Fuck Em All.Nairn
- I use chrome on iPhone as the default browserSimonFFM
- ^ It's just a front, the rendering engine is still Safari.zarkonite
- I wonder if HEIC will be nextkaiyohtee
- FF is decent on ioskaiyohtee
- Guys, bring back Flash and swf. Pleaze.shapesalad
- Chrome on iOS or Mac is a battery killer!!!nb
- Webp was added to Safari/macOS starting with macOS Mojave some years back. It's read-only though, so you won't be able to create Webp files with Preview, etc.evilpeacock
- To the above, this is a useful converter for macOS:
https://webponize.or…evilpeacock - HEIF and AVIF are newer and better than Webp, also open source (not Google) and getting some traction in use by services like Netflix. So that's coming...evilpeacock
- ^yes, always good to know but also difficult to keep up with technologies...SimonFFM
- I've been using Chrome on my iPhone and iPad for ages without any issues.CyBrainX
- yuekit1
It really depends how much you care about optimizing your download time. As annoying as WebP is, you can get to a small file size more easily than with other formats.
This could be useful for sites that are trying to optimize every last detail of their site for SEO reasons. However if you are a photographer you probably want to showcase high-quality images of your work, so you might not care so much about that.
If using WebP, I think the best practice these days would be to use the picture tag and provide both a WebP file and also a JPG or PNG as a fallback, since not all browsers support it. If you are using WordPress or another CMS a plugin might take care of this for you as utopian said.
- SimonFFM0
Thank you, guys! I didn’t expect such in depth answers.
Technically speaken: my website is using a self-programmed CMS. It would be difficult for me to serve both, JPG and WEBP.
Only serving WEBP might be bad because of only recently added Safari support.
I don’t need to serve HQ images. Compression is fine because otherwise people steal and sell my photos (happened in the past, even on sites like Catawiki).
All my images are already compressed with magick (a tool google recommended). Tinypng gives about 10kb better results but not more. The magick tool runs on my machine, so it’s fine.
I guess I will move to WEBP but wait a few more months for this.
Thanks for your thoughts and ideas!
- SimonFFM0
@uan
Thanks for mentioning this. I will try to get this done with my server setup and the use of the .htaccess file to determine to whom the webp version can get delivered and who gets the jpg alternative.
This is just beyond my skills currently, so I am not 100% sure, if I can work this out. I will try. It seems to be the best solution.
If anyone else wants to read more about it, it is explained here:
https://www.digitalocean.com/com…
- kaiyohtee0
Interesting wordmark. I think they should use it.
- Nairn2
NO.