browsers

Put Your Site on a Diet With Google’s Image-Shrinking ‘WebP’ Format

Mar 142013

Webpages are constantly getting bigger.

Massive JavaScript libraries and endless sharing buttons aren’t helping, but the main culprit behind most of the bloat is the good old image. According to the HTTPArchive, images account for roughly 60 percent of total page size. That means the single biggest thing most sites can do to slim down is to shrink their images.

One way to do that is with alternate image formats like Google’s WebP, which can yield images between 25 and 34 percent smaller than more popular image formats. Despite the astounding space-saving potential of WebP it, like JPEG 2000 and other efforts before it, has not completely caught on with browsers.

So far only Google Chrome and Opera support WebP (both also automatically convert all images to WebP for their respective proxy browsing mobile services). Mozilla objected to WebP when it was first launched, but all of the issues raised in that post have been addressed as WebP has evolved. Firefox still does not support WebP. Nor does Internet Explorer.

However, as Opera’s Bruce Lawson recently pointed out, using some cutting-edge CSS wizardry you can serve WebP images to Chrome and Opera, while still offering JPGs to the rest.

Ars browser shootout: which Web browser is best for business?

interface, Tech News 249 Responses »

Apr 052012

Most Web browser reviews focus on one thing: speed. Speed is all well and good, but browser benchmark scores fail to answer a fundamental question: which browser is best for business?

In an enterprise environment, speed is simply one concern among many. There are bigger questions: How secure are these browsers, and how well do they keep users from getting viruses or visiting fraudulent websites? How often are they updated, and how easy is it to apply these updates to multiple managed systems? How important do the companies behind these browsers think that the enterprise is? We set out to compare Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera to answer these questions and more.

For our purposes, we’ll assume that all else is equal in your environment—that your shop doesn’t live and die by a particular Firefox add-on or an Intranet site that won’t render in anything that’s not Internet Explorer 6. If you’ve got extenuating circumstances that dictate which browser you use, as many businesses do, consider these facts if you’re trying to decide on a secondary or alternate browser for your systems.