

Opera embraces Google's open source JPEG killer - sasvari
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/12/opera_eleven_dot_one_zero_released/

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DarkShikari
Advantages:

 _Theoretically better compression than JPEG (but ... so was JPEG-2000)._

Disadvantages:

 _The encoder actually loses to JPEG in many tests and almost everything it
encodes looks like a blurry mess._

 _No support for any color format besides 4:2:0._

 _Almost no support in image editing applications._

 _An order of magnitude slower than JPEG._

Somehow I don't think this is much of a "JPEG killer". Its technology is 10
years out of date, entirely copy-pasted from H.264, and its featureset isn't
even close to _equalling_ JPEG's, let alone adding new features that people
wanted.

~~~
wladimir
Compression is slower. But it isn't entirely clear to me whether decompression
is slower than JPEG too. That's the thing that matters.

I cannot find any comparison, but that's because WEBP is a very bad name for
searching on google: it gets shortened to 'web'.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Try +WEBP - The + tells Google to ignore what _it_ thinks and just listen to
you, the user, dammit.

~~~
benmccann
Yes, or put it in quotes.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Adding this way after the discssion in case it appears in future searches -
the quotes don't really help with words that can be split into other words.

My great-grandfather's surname is Aland. I did some searching on him recently
- a search for "Aland" also returns results for "Al and" and "a land", neither
of which are relevant. Using the + prevents that.

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janjan
It might be a stupid question, but: Is there an example of a hyped "whatever
killer" that actually killed "whatever"? I have the feeling that all those
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, iPad/iPad/iPhone killer that sensationalist
journalists tend to write about are forgotten after half a year or so.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
When did all this whatever-Killer stuff start anyway? I'm not sure I've heard
it in any other context than Apple's portable products e.g. iMac-killer, Wii-
Killer, netbook-killer, Windows-killer, IE-killer, Ubuntu-killer, x86-killer
or whatever don't seem to ring true to me even if they've dominated mindshare
(in various markets, for various lengths of time). In general, why would you
want to "kill" them, rather than say outsell them or offer better specs at a
lower price? Seems very wierd and macho. Do any actual company representatives
use this language, or is it just gadget blogs?

This is the oldest entry a quick google returns, was he copying an earlier
snowclone?

 _"Creative unveils potential iPod killer"_

<http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2002/10/1152.ars>

To add further confusion, I wouldn't assume that a Register headline to be
without snark, and similarly I've lately seen iPad-killer used as a sarcastic
insult, with the implicit assumption that it will fail.

~~~
pavlov
"X killer" goes as far back as the PC revolution, at least.

Google finds examples of Digital Research's GEM window environment being
hailed as the Mac killer. This was back in 1985.

Searching for "IBM killer" finds references to the Digital VAX 9000, a failed
minicomputer model that tried to beat IBM mainframes at their game.

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wladimir
Too bad alpha channel support is not part of the WebP spec yet (although it's
promised). That would have the potential to truly make it a JPEG killer.

Currently, PNG24 is the only (browser supported) image format that supports
transparency, but the files can be huge.

The only advantage over JPEG currently is that the files are somewhat smaller
for the same quality. Yes, that's nice, but not enough to displace an heavily
ingrained format with 20 years of use.

~~~
underwater
8 bit PNG supports alpha transparency. It's just Adobe have chosen not to
implement it in Photoshop. See here <http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-
clear-winner/>.

~~~
wladimir
But that's hardly in the same league. The only use-case for PNG8 is small
icons. For everything else, 8-bit paletted formats lead to banding and
dithering like it's 1995.

~~~
_delirium
Most of the large diagrams I make use fewer than 2^8 colors, but then I tend
to use solid-color stuff rather than gradients. Granted, SVG is even better
for those, but if they need to be rasterized (as they often do), PNG8 works
fine.

~~~
wladimir
I like to use slight gradients and/or antialiased text. Both use up palette
entries like crazy.

Good point about SVG(.gz), I forgot about it. SVG it can do transparency as
well, and is extremely compact, at least for diagrams. And even better, it
allows to add interactivity to your diagrams.

WEBP would be as unsuited as JPEG for diagrams, as your high frequency drawing
will be turned into a blurry mess. However, for things like layer effects and
backgrounds, it'd still be nice to have a lossy raster format that supports
partial transparency.

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nikcub
JPEG doesn't have to die for WebP to be a success, and it probably won't

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arkitaip
Direkt link to relevant specs

<http://code.google.com/speed/webp/>
<http://code.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container.html>

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aidenn0
What ever happend to JPEG-2000?

