[e-topy]

Instead of using a new PNG standard, I'd still rather use JPEG XL just because it has progressive decoding. And you know, whilst looking like png, being as small as webp, supporting HDR and animations, and having even faster decoding speed.

https://dennisforbes.ca/articles/jpegxl_just_won_the_image_w...

[jchw]

JPEG XL definitely has advantages over PNG but there is one serious seemingly insurmountable obstacle:

https://caniuse.com/jpegxl

Nothing really supports it. Latest Safari at least has support for it not feature-flagged or anything, but it doesn't support JPEG XL animations.

To be fair, nothing supports a theoretical PNG with Zstandard compression either. While that would be an obstacle to using PNG with Zstandard for a while, I kinda suspect it wouldn't be that long of a wait because many things that support PNG today also support Zstandard anyways, so it's not a huge leap for them to add Zstandard support to their PNG codecs. Adding JPEG-XL support is a relatively bigger ticket that has struggled to cross the finish line.

The thing I'm really surprised about is that you still can't use arithmetic coding with JPEG. I think the original reason is due to patents, but I don't think there have been active patents around that in years now.

[Scaevolus]

Every new image codec faces this challenge. PNG + Zstandard would look similar. The ones that succeeded have managed it by piggybacking off a video codec, like https://caniuse.com/avif.

[breve]

> but there is one serious seemingly insurmountable obstacle

It can be surmounted with WebAssembly: https://github.com/niutech/jxl.js/

Single thread demo: https://niutech.github.io/jxl.js/

Multithread demo: https://niutech.github.io/jxl.js/multithread/

[fluidcruft]

As I understand it JPEG XL has a lot of interest in medical imaging and is coming to DICOM. After it's in DICOM, whichever browser supports it best will rule hospitals.

[greenavocado]

That's because people have allowed the accumulation of power and control by Big Tech. Features in and capabilities of end user operating systems and browsers are gate kept by a handful of people in Big Tech. There is no free market there. Winners are picked by politics, not merit. Switching costs are extreme due to vendor lock in and carefully engineered friction.

The justification for WebP in Chrome over JPEG-XL was pure hand waving nonsense not technical merit. The reality is they would not dare cede any control or influence to the JPEG-XL working group.

Hell the EU is CONSIDERING mandatory attestation driven by whitelisted signed phone firmwares for certain essential activities. Freedom of choice is an illusion.

[IshKebab]

> I kinda suspect it wouldn't be that long of a wait

Yeah... guess again. It took Chrome 13 years to support animated PNG - the last major change to PNG.

[BrenBarn]

It's better when the way it works is "this is format is good, therefore we will support it" rather than "people support this format, therefore it is good".

[bawolff]

> The thing I'm really surprised about is that you still can't use arithmetic coding with JPEG.

I was under the impression libjpeg added support in 2009 (in v7). I'd assume most things support it by now.

[kps]

> Nothing really supports it.

Everything supports it, except web browsers.

[ryao]

JPEG XL support will probably resemble JPEG 2000 support after enough time has passed:

https://caniuse.com/jpeg2000

[a-french-anon]

>he thing I'm really surprised about is that you still can't use arithmetic coding with JPEG

Or AVC YUV44 with Firefox (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368063). Fortunately, AV1 YUV444 seems to be supported.

[JyrkiAlakuijala]

PNG with ZStandard or Brotli is much worse than WebP lossless.

[Zardoz84]

You can use a polyfill.

[porphyra]

I don't like progressive decoding. Lots of people don't realize that it's a thing, and complain that my photo is blurry when it simply hasn't loaded fully yet. If it just loaded normally from top to bottom, it would be obvious whether it has loaded or not, and people will be able to more accurately judge the quality of the image. That's why I always save my JPEGs as baseline encoding.

[eviks]

Is there no good progress indicator that gets you the best of both worlds - instant image recognition and the ability to wait and get better quality?

[adzm]

Web browsers already have code in place for webp (lossless,vp8) and avif (av1, which also supports animation), as well as classic jpeg and png, and maybe also HEIC (hevc/h265)... what benefit do we have by adding yet another file format if all the use cases are already covered by the existing formats? That said, I do like JPEG-XL, but I also kind of understand the hesitation to adopt it too. I imagine if Apple's push for it continues, then it is just a matter of time to get supported more broadly in Chrome etc.

[Dylan16807]

Avif is cute but using that as an excuse to not add jxl is a travesty. At the time either one of those could have been added, jxl should have been the choice.

The biggest benefit is that it's actually designed as an image format. All the video offshoots have massive compromises made so they can be decoded in 15 milliseconds in hardware.

The ability to shrink old jpegs with zero generation loss is pretty good too.

[eviks]

The benefits are better quality, higher speed, and more features like progressive decoding. JXL is a single multi-trick pony unlike the others

Good summary https://cloudinary.com/blog/time_for_next_gen_codecs_to_deth...

[bawolff]

Doesn't PNG have progressive decoding? I.e. adam7 algorithm

[layer8]

It does, using Adam7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam7_algorithm

The recently released PNG 3 also supports HDR and animations: https://www.w3.org/TR/png-3/

[duskwuff]

Adam7 is interlacing, not progressive decoding (i.e. it cannot be used to selectively decode a part of the image). It also interacts extremely poorly with compression; there is no good reason to ever use it.