Mozilla Comes Out Neutral On JPEG-XL Image Format Support

[cjcox]

In our Google (and those that are just Google riders) owned world, does it matter? I mean we FF users, are like, what... less than 5% nowadays?

[andyprough]

waterfox, the fork of firefox ESR does, and it works really well, probably a lot better then palemoon last I checked

I downloaded the current Waterfox G5.1.2 to test it side by side with the latest Pale Moon 32.0.0. On the jpegxl.info test page, Waterfox does not appear to be rendering the page background correctly or the wide-gamut image, whereas Pale Moon seems to render everything accurately. On the jpegxl.info art page, they both appear to show the same images with the same quality. Let me know if there are other test pages, I'll be happy to compare them.

[Artim]

this is BS propagated by the chrome team, JXL absolutely demolishes AVIF for high fidelty images, has proper alpha support, supports incredibly large images, has proper progressive decoding too. it can even utilize part of it's progressive decoding technology to support multiple resolutions with a single image.

This has nothing to do with "propaganda". Those are simply all the wrong reasons why JXL should be supported. Reality is, the majority of users doesn't care at all about those things, they most likely wouldn't even notice them. I'm not sure what sites with a large amount of images currently mainly use to ship their images, but I don't see them all shipping AVIF to any browser supporting it, as it would be the case if everybody wanted images as small as possible. AVIF currently is the best format for small images that's supported by the majority of browsers (even Safari), but I hardly see it anywhere, even when converting to it shouldn't be that big of a deal especially for companies like Meta/Instagram.

The rest of the features would only be used by an insignificant niche, if at all. Weighing that against the resources need to implement it (and possibly depreciating current jpeg decoding) just doesn't come out positive for yet another format about nobody will use.

[stormcrow]

They don't dare take a stance contradictory to the source of their main income stream.

Or they really don't give much of a care like most of the rest of their users. "Neutral" is exactly what they should be. They'll include it in a final product when it makes sense to do so. There's nothing in their explanation that's wrong. It's an opinion based on what they see happening on the web itself. It's sensible, as unbiased a take as I've seen, and such is utterly pissing off JPEG-XL partisans like yourself. Most of whom are probably not even website builders or stakeholders, so they've got no standing. Few others are going to care one way or the other.

What's standing people may ask? It's a legal concept. No one in the US legal system (and ones similar to it) has the right to bring claim unless they can show personal harm by the given actions. This is called "standing". It prevents the kind of theoretical harm abuses rife in some other legal systems (yes I know it's not perfect, but without it the system would be even more rife with trivial money grubbing than it already is). It boils down to the fact that the only person that's entitled to redress are those that have suffered from any given action. In this case, unless you personally are (working for) a website hosting service, builder, or part of the creative team for one, you don't have a personal harm and have no right to demand people listen to your complaint.

[Quackdoc]

This has nothing to do with "propaganda". Those are simply all the wrong reasons why JXL should be supported. Reality is, the majority of users doesn't care at all about those things, they most likely wouldn't even notice them. I'm not sure what sites with a large amount of images currently mainly use to ship their images, but I don't see them all shipping AVIF to any browser supporting it, as it would be the case if everybody wanted images as small as possible. AVIF currently is the best format for small images that's supported by the majority of browsers (even Safari), but I hardly see it anywhere, even when converting to it shouldn't be that big of a deal especially for companies like Meta/Instagram.

The rest of the features would only be used by an insignificant niche, if at all. Weighing that against the resources need to implement it (and possibly depreciating current jpeg decoding) just doesn't come out positive for yet another format about nobody will use.

lots of users care about high fidelity and small file size, and any user on a slower internet knows just how important progressive decoding is. in the range where there aren't any distracting artifacts, which are most images on the web you see now, JXL wins in the majority of cases. browser support isn't that relevant for new image formats, especially for services where the main issue is bandwidth (like many galleries). AVIF when it comes to high fidelity images comparing to file size, isn't even all that much better then an optimized jpeg. so it's not a surprise that AVIF adoption has been slow. (though services like google ARE serving it now)

I downloaded the current Waterfox G5.1.2 to test it side by side with the latest Pale Moon 32.0.0. On the jpegxl.info test page, Waterfox does not appear to be rendering the page background correctly or the wide-gamut image, whereas Pale Moon seems to render everything accurately. On the jpegxl.info art page, they both appear to show the same images with the same quality. Let me know if there are other test pages, I'll be happy to compare them.

interesting, last I checked alpha and animations didn't work on PM, guess ill have to test it out then.

[Artim]

lots of users care about high fidelity and small file size, ,[..]

I call BS. At least when defining "lots of users" as a large enough number of users that any browser and web developer should be anything else than indifferent about any benefits JXL could bring. Most images served on any given day will be served by Instagram. I doubt they serve anything beyond JPEG and PNG, uploads are far from "high fidelity". Many are uploads from the phones camera, either as JPEG or HEIF. So you can't just magically get "high fidelity" just by switching to JXL. And the size factor is already disproven by the vast majority of the web never having developed to serve anything beyond JPEG. You can already be glad when graphics representable as a vector graphic is served as svg and not a PNG, being much smaller independent of size and easily compressable by gzip and brotli.

[Quackdoc]

I call BS. At least when defining "lots of users" as a large enough number of users that any browser and web developer should be anything else than indifferent about any benefits JXL could bring. Most images served on any given day will be served by Instagram. I doubt they serve anything beyond JPEG and PNG, uploads are far from "high fidelity". Many are uploads from the phones camera, either as JPEG or HEIF. So you can't just magically get "high fidelity" just by switching to JXL. And the size factor is already disproven by the vast majority of the web never having developed to serve anything beyond JPEG. You can already be glad when graphics representable as a vector graphic is served as svg and not a PNG, being much smaller independent of size and easily compressable by gzip and brotli.

what do you consider high fidelity? lossless? I would consider high fidelity anything accurate enough that a human wouldn't be able to tell without looking at it explicitly looking for differences when the two images are side by side. stepping up from there you have visually lossless, in which case its not expected unless by pixel peeping to be able to realistically tell a difference, and then real lossless.

optimized jpegs are suitable enough for high fidelity. however JXL is better, and is still better then avif. also when I mean high fidelity, I mean when comparing from the source, not necessarily exported from lightroom

[andyprough]

interesting, last I checked alpha and animations didn't work on PM, guess ill have to test it out then.

Pale Moon has been continuously improving its jxl support since they introduced it about 3 versions ago. If you tried it with the first working version, there were various rendering and color problems. I think I recall the devs were wanting to have the first browser with any jxl support and it ended up being a work in progress.

[ElectricPrism]

This whole thing stinks of sneakery.

The governing members of the Alliance for Open Media are Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and Tencent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Open_Media

Obviously, there are hidden hands pushing their agendas for their own nefarious gain.

These are not charities that are behind this -- these are the biggest for-profit companies -- be it royaltees, licensing fees, control of the technology, the ability to push binary blobs and government back-doors into gpus, cpus, and tech. -- Whatever.



One format is built by the establishment, and the other is not. The establishment is not going to do anything buy reinforce their continued necessary existence like a tick sucking your blood.

[ElectricPrism]

phoronix -- will you ever do something about vbulletin spam filters? Surely when an account is over 10 years old or over 1000 posts it's unlikely to be a bot. All the false positives really put a damper on this website.