Jon Sneyers

The Case for JPEG XL

Screenshot of “The Case for JPEG XL”

Jon gives a good overview of everything JPEG XL improves over other image formats. This article can be seen by some as biaised, as Jon is part of the team that created the format, but I really think it honestly shows clear advantages, and I hope it will help people understand JPEG XL support in browsers would be great.

JPEG XL is the first serious candidate to become a universal image format that “works across the workflow”, in the sense that it is suitable for the lifecycle of a digital image, from capture and authoring to interchange, archival, and delivery. For web developers, this has the advantage that there are fewer interoperability issues and conversion processes needed in digital asset management; for end-users, it means they can save images from webpages and expect them to ‘just work’ in other applications outside the browser. Obviously, JPEG XL is not there yet in terms of adoption, but at least it is plausible that it can obtain broader adoption than formats that limit their scope to web delivery only and don’t bring significant benefits to other use cases.

Having a passion for both the Web and photography, it really rings a bell!

  1. Note from 4 April 2024

    Most mentions of the magical CSS object-fit: cover; in development tutorials should be accompanied by a warning: in most situations, it means the browser will download an image that is larger than required (at least in one direction), and optimization on the server side could be a better option.