I've a new client who is just starting out online. Their supplier has sent them all the product images they requested (320 @ the mo') which are in the WEBP format. Those files are very much optimised for online & considerably smaller than jpgs. This image format seems to becoming ever so popular.

For example, a jpg file that would be used for uploading as a product image at it's smallest file size comes out at 114K but when converted to WEBP drops to 62K; that's a 55% saving, which is huge and what's more Google loves! I don't want to have to convert all their images to jpg's, which I know isn't that much of a pain in the ar53, if the current uploader can support WEBP.

Sadly the image uploader (ECT PHP version 7.2.3) does not recognise the WEBP format, just comes up with illegal file type.

So, my question is can / will the built in image uploader be able to support WEBP?



Steve

Bolton Lancashire England

Hi Steve
Good point, and I will get Webp support sorted out. But for the meantime would it be possible to upload the files using FTP? That's got to be preferable to converting to JPG no?

Vince

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All well and good, but you still need both formats and a way to deliver the right format to the right user. You can serve webp to those that like it, but you still need all the images in some conventional png/jpg/gif format as a fallback for those that don't. Unless you're OK with people using Safari and IE not seeing any images at all.

Peter


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Shared hosting Windows & Linux | Dedicated servers | Domains | SSL
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Hi Vince

The supplier has now sent all the images in jpg format after they stated that no jpg's were available.

Hi Peter

quote:

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Unless you're OK with people using Safari and IE not seeing any images at all

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Apple has added support for WEBP in Safari 14, so some improvement. - https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/webp-safari-14/. I am aware of the issue for the format fallback

IE, what on earth is that??

You can laugh at IE if you don't mind losing <5% of your business, but Safari includes not just macOS, but iOS and iPadOS, which is huge. It'll still be several years before browser support is sufficient to allow a 100% webp deployment to make sense. By which time Google will probably have lost interest and started pushing something else. In the interim, doubling up on product images and serving different formats to different browsers is more trouble than it's worth for non-enterprise sites imo.

Peter


Professional ecommerce web hosting services
Shared hosting Windows & Linux | Dedicated servers | Domains | SSL
Ecommerce Templates specialists since 2003
https://servelink.com

quote:

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IE, what on earth is that??

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Actually that was tongue in cheek & I am aware that Safari includes not just macOS, but iOS and iPadOS.

quote:

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It'll still be several years before browser support is sufficient to allow a 100% webp deployment to make sense. By which time Google will probably have lost interest and started pushing something else. In the interim, doubling up on product images and serving different formats to different browsers is more trouble than it's worth for non-enterprise sites imo.

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I couldn't agree more. Annoyingly Google has the world jumping to it's tune & I'm certainly not intending on doubling up on any work, I've more than enough to be bobbing along with!

With regard to "webp" we'd love to see support for it because it REALLY helps lessen load time!, while offering an alternative link if the client's browser doesn't support webp:
<picture>
<source srcset="path/img.webp" type="image/webp">
<source srcset="path/img.png" type="image/png">
<img alt="Logo" src="path/img.png" style="border-width: 0px" height="100" width="351">
</picture>

... And note the use of the height and width data, which Google now requires to meet their definition of "mobile friendly code" instead of previous parameters WITHOUT height and width info.

Which brings up the question: Is there a way that image sizes can be added to the code when uploading small, large and giant images? So after uploading an image, image code should read something like this:
<img alt="XXXX" src="prodimages/XXXXX.jpg" height="XXX" width="XXX">
(with all of the other id= and class= stuff that gets put in there of course)

integrating these 2 coding protocols will help us ALL with our Load Speed challenges.

Thanks! Just wanted to share our experience with these parameters ....


Tim Gorski

Hi Tim
There isn't a way at the moment to set the width and height but if you post in the suggestions forum the post will be there when we are looking for ideas for updaters.

Vince

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