Comment by abanana
1 day ago
Regarding real-world use of WebP - what makes it much worse, in my experience, is that so many web servers are set up to do a lossy conversion to WebP from the original file, most often JPEG (to cut down on bandwidth, or just to satisfy a web speed report originating from Google and therefore pushing Google's technologies). The difference is often very noticeable, e.g. textures smoothed out of existence. Helps to remove WebP from the Accepts header to force servers to serve the original.
It means the technical differences between format, and the real-world choice of which file you want, don't match.
Which is a big advantage jpegxl has over avif. You can convert existing jpegs to smaller jpegxls without losing any data.
> Helps to remove WebP from the Accepts header to force servers to serve the original.
I have tried doing that with curl/wget but have been unsuccessful, websites still serve webp even when the original URL ends with .jpg or .png... Could you explain how you do it?
Sorry for the late response. I did it in Firefox 115 ESR by setting "image.webp.enabled" to false in about:config. I just looked in there to get the exact name, using latest Firefox, and realised they've removed it. Next time I want it I'll have to look into browser extensions - looks like some don't work anymore - or stick to using the older browser for now for some sites.
If you're sure cURL is sending the Accept header correctly without WebP, e.g. just "Accept: image/png,image/jpeg" (note my error in my earlier post, it's Accept not Accepts), and the server is still serving WebP, then it's misconfigured and there may be nothing you can do, short of swearing at it.
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