Browsers pushing AVIF media format?

Ice Tea

Ice Tea

Ice Tea

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Anyone else think that AVIF looks crap?

I don't get it when you consider the amount of bandwidth and processing power webpages now use with java and scripts , does it matter if a picture is 3kb or 1kb?

Example:

https://jakearchibald.com/2020/avif-has-landed/

Look at the first F1 photo and swap between Original and AVIF on the tabs at the bottom of the screen while looking at the tarmac top left corner and see how the markings disappear.

*Edit*

Correction in post 14 :rolleyes:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/35081326/

Well that's embarrassing , i've just noticed that the original tab is a 2.5mb raw png and not a jpg that i thought that it was so swapping between the actual JPEG and AVIF tabs there is very little difference.

I blame early morning posting that i didn't even notice the second tab say JPEG and most of the quality was already lost, SIGH!
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I don't know how you can say it looks crap when it looks almost identical?

It'll have a great use case for mobile pages where ultra high res can saturate bandwidth in a low signal environment, or where connection is only solid for a brief moment and your device pre-fetches.
 
The original is 476kb vs 18kb - that is an amazing reduction! I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if I wasn't switching between them.
 
I can only just see the difference between the images, and probably only because you pointed them out.

Admittedly I'm only on my phone and just had a quick glance.

I can see why this would be a problem in some cases (e.g. showcasing your photography), but I imagine it will be fine in 90% of cases, so as long as you (as the site owner) are not forced to use this format, then I can't see a problem.
 
NotAGolf said:
I can only just see the difference between the images, and probably only because you pointed them out.

Admittedly I'm only on my phone and just had a quick glance.

I can see why this would be a problem in some cases (e.g. showcasing your photography), but I imagine it will be fine in 90% of cases, so as long as you (as the site owner) are not forced to use this format, then I can't see a problem.
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And let's be honest, just like all of the other highly compressed image formats that went before AVIF, if your use case is showcasing your photography - you'll stick to a less compressed format.

OP will tell us he is mad we don't use RAW for every image next.
 
Multiply that saving by the typical number of images on a page and its pretty significant. Also bear in mind that in a lot of the world mobile bandwidth is expensive and usually capped download limit so anything keeping it down is good.

Its very easy to say "it doesn't matter" when your metric is the typical UK connection of 100mb downstream and no download limits. Its a trap we developers can fall into all too easily and then wonder why people say our mobile sites are crap.
 
Looks absolutely fine, and anything that helps reduce bandwidth (as not all of the UK has 100mb internet yes) is a bonus
 
OcUK forums will soon be increasing the max image size limits for sigs and things then? :p
 
I have a similar issue but with WEBP. Is there a way to prevent the server from pushing the WEBP format? My only workaround at the moment is to copy the link into an old browser such as Internet Explorer (that doesn't recognise WEBP) and that forces the server to fetch the original JPG or PNG. I want to be able to save the original image and load it into Paintshop Pro etc.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
I have a similar issue but with WEBP. Is there a way to prevent the server from pushing the WEBP format? My only workaround at the moment is to copy the link into an old browser such as Internet Explorer (that doesn't recognise WEBP) and that forces the server to fetch the original JPG or PNG. I want to be able to save the original image and load it into Paintshop Pro etc.
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Could you change the user agent string to something like IE8?
 
Well that's embarrassing , i've just noticed that the original tab is a 2.5mb raw png and not a jpg that i thought that it was so swapping between the actual JPEG and AVIF tabs there is very little difference.

I blame early morning posting that i didn't even notice the second tab say JPEG and most of the quality was already lost, SIGH!
 
peterwalkley said:
Multiply that saving by the typical number of images on a page and its pretty significant. .... Its a trap we developers can fall into all too easily and then wonder why people say our mobile sites are crap.
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Its very impressive the size saving versus quality.

I wouldn't be surprised though if that saving was still less than all the garbage javascript that runs in the background of sites these days .... thats the killer of site performance to me and what developers should be addressing.

A lot of the time, pages load their core but stall because of waiting on background ads to reply ... its infuriating.
 
In that link it looks fine to me. Sure, it's a bit softer and the biggest difference my eyes can make out is the shadow looks a bit different.

Nothing I'd get irate about to be honest.
 
Web dev here, jpeg compressed compared to AVIF compressed is a no brainer in that example.

For images in news articles, products etc which is what most of us consume the quality difference won't be seen but the performance impact is very important. Especially for mobile, as it is something search engines hugely favour becasue not everybody in the world has access to fast and unlimited data. It's also important for sales conversion. A slow loading and poor performing site will put people off spending money because it's a bad experience. It also makes storage and distribution cheaper & easier especially if your content is consumed worldwide.
 
mrk said:
OcUK forums will soon be increasing the max image size limits for sigs and things then? :p
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How can we increase a limit that's effectively unlimited anyway :p

Perhaps with these new highly compressed formats we should decrease the limit..... :D
 
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