I’ve been wondering why .webp isn’t used more often. It took me a while to switch to it as my go-to format instead of sticking with compressed .jpgs, but ever since I made the switch, I’m surprised it’s not more common.
Just today, I took a large 3000x1500 jpg (1.25MB, 300DPI) and ran it through a .jpg to .webp converter. The result? A file size of 96kb. No visible quality loss and a whopping 92% reduction in size.
Curious about why people aren’t jumping on the .webp train, I checked caniuse.com, and aside from the ever-annoying Internet Explorer, it’s fully supported!
Do you guys use .webp for your images? If not, can someone explain why it’s not being embraced more?
Yeah, .webp and .avif are pretty common now. Just check out any image-heavy site like Airbnb, and you’ll see them in action. JPG still hangs around as a fallback for older devices though. RIP to JPEG-XL!
I personally stick to .webp by default and don’t bother with backward compatibility. I mean, who’s really worried about supporting web browsers on a Nintendo DS these days? "
Photoshop’s been super slow with adding WebP export, and since it’s still the go-to for image editing in design and photography, that’s where the change really needs to happen. Once it’s more integrated there, content creators just need to learn to start using it.
Not saying this is the main reason, but a lot of software just doesn’t support formats like HEIC, AVIF, or WebP. The number of people asking for help because they saved an image in one of those formats and couldn’t use it would be insane.
Honestly, a lot of computers probably can’t even display them properly, so people just think the files are “broken.”
For compression, AVIF gives you better quality at an even smaller file size compared to .jpg. On my site, I use AVIF images and keep the raw .jpgs as backups (using the source tag for fallback). Honestly, there’s no point wasting disk space converting to .webp anymore since AVIF support is almost on par with .webp now.
Fair point! That original 1.25MB jpeg could’ve definitely been compressed more efficiently without losing any quality. The size difference should be more like 30%, not 500%. Honestly, it’s not a huge deal when things like ads and videos are eating up 100x more bandwidth anyway.
I work on a pretty image-heavy site, and everything on the backend is still handled as .jpg and .png. We’ve set up Cloudflare to handle resizing and reformatting, along with their caching service, but that took a bit of work to get right. So yeah, we serve .webp in a lot of places, but the original assets are still in the old formats. I figure a lot of businesses are stuck in their “old ways,” and moving forward with newer formats is probably all about whether the cost outweighs the benefits.
I like .webp though—it’s great to get smaller files than .jpg and have transparency like .png. But since end-user bandwidth has been improving over time, the old formats are still manageable for most users. Where .webp really shines is on slow mobile connections, so it depends on what the company expects from its audience and target market.