Google *Unkills* JPEG XL?
24 comments
·December 1, 2025dweekly
ChrisArchitect
[dupe]
Main recent discussion:
Google Revisits JPEG XL in Chromium After Earlier Removal
m348e912
A full-resolution, maximum-size JPEG XL image (1,073,741,823 × 1,073,741,824):
Uncompressed: 3.5–7 exabytes Realistically compressed: Tens to hundreds of petabytes
Thats a serious high-res image
mcdonje
So tempted to make a cheap crass joke, but that goes against the culture here.
flir
An image of earth at very roughly 4cmx4cm resolution? (If I've knocked the zero's off correctly)
cubefox
Yes, but unlike AVIF, JPEG XL supports progressive decoding, so you can see the picture in lower quality long before the download has finished. (Ordinary JPEG also supports progressive decoding, but in a much less efficient manner, which means you have to wait longer for previews with lower quality.)
Finnucane
Cool, that means it'll appear in ebook reading systems in five to ten years.
PaulHoule
It'll be in PDF sooner, and my experience is that PDF >> any other system for ebooks. I liked the idea of EPUB but when I recently installed an EPUB reader to read some files I was shocked at how awful it looked whereas for 15 years I've been reading PDF files on tablets with relish.
mubou2
Have you ever tried reading a PDF ebook on a phone? Small font size, doesn't fill the entire screen (phones are taller), margins make it appear even smaller... even if you have good eyesight it's a pain. The whole point of PDF is to preserve a page layout as authored. EPUB is meant to adapt to your device.
IshKebab
That seems optimistic...
ocdtrekkie
As a monopoly, Google should be barred from having standards positions and be legally required to build and support the web standards as determined by other parties.
The insanity that the web platform is just "whatever Google's whims are" remains insane and mercurial. The web platform should not be as inconsistent as Google's own product strategies, wonder if XSLT will get unkilled in a few months.
SquareWheel
Which other parties? Because Mozilla's stance on JPEG XL and XSLT are identical to Google's. They don't want to create a maintenance burden for features that offer little benefit over existing options.
mubou2
Didn't Mozilla basically say they would support it if Google does? Mozilla doesn't have the resources to maintain a feature that no one can actually use; they're barely managing to keep up with the latest standards as it is.
philipallstar
They have many millions to spend on engineers. They should do that.
jfindper
>Because Mozilla's stance on JPEG XL and XSLT are identical to Google's.
Okay, and do they align on every other web standard too?
johncolanduoni
Usually it’s Mozilla not wanting to implement something Google wants to implement, not the other way around.
simonw
Having key browser implementers not involved in the standards processes is what lead us to the W3C wasting several years chasing XHTML 2.0.
ocdtrekkie
There are other key browser implementers. Google should not have more than an advisory role in any standards organization.
nilamo
Barred by who? There is no governing body who can do such a thing, currently. As it is, nothing stops any random person or organization from creating any new format.
bigbuppo
Well, they said they would unkill xslt if someone would rewrite and maintain it so that it's not the abandonware horrorshow it was.
As for JPEG XL, of course they unkilled it. WEBP has been deprecated in favor of JPEG XL.
lloydatkinson
Webp deprecated? According to what?
lern_too_spel
VP8 is in all major browsers due to WebRTC, and webp uses little more code than the VP8 keyframe decoder, so it also has baseline support and is unlikely to be deprecated any time soon. https://caniuse.com/?search=vp8
Similarly, AVIF uses little more code than the AV1 keyframe decoder, so since every browser supports AV1, every browser also supports AVIF.
ryanmcbride
honestly hate webp so happy about this
excusable
I don't know much about webp. Just have checked the wiki, it looks nice. So for which reason you hate it?
Prior HN posts/discussions:
Chromium Team Re-Opens JPEG XL Feature Ticket https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018994
FSF Slams Google over Dropping JPEG-XL in Chrome https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35589179
Google set to deprecate JPEG XL support in Chrome 110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33399940
Chromium jpegxl issue closed as won't fix https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40407475