Mozilla has commented on possible support for the JPEG XL graphics format as a future web standard. One is “neutral” towards the raster image format and JPEG successor. The statement by Mozilla Distinguished Engineer Martin Thomson on GitHub is a response to a request made by a user back in May 2021 entitled “Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification”.
Basically, Thomson begins his reply, two factors have to be weighed against each other. On the one hand, new web standards always entail costs – both for Mozilla and for the WWW itself. Fewer standards are therefore better because the complexity of the maintenance measures is reduced. New file formats, on the other hand, would first have to prove that they offer “a significant advantage over the existing ones.”
Even if it doesn’t matter = neutral
On the other hand, there are already “a large number of raster image formats with many of the same problems” on the Internet. In other words, JPEG XL wouldn’t make the herb more fat as an additional standard either. Therefore, one is not fundamentally against the new format, which also offers “some potential advantages, both in terms of functions and performance”. Nevertheless, these advantages over existing file formats are not seen as great enough to integrate JPEG XL into the official version of its web browser Firefox. The experimental developer version Firefox Nightly has supported JPEG XL since April 2021.
Google had already withdrawn support for the JPEG successor in October 2022 and also removed support in experimental developer versions of its Chromium browser. In addition to a supposed lack of interest, Google also cited too few technical advantages as a reason. At that time, the company had reaped great resentment from the user community, but also from the industry, for the decision. Last hopes now rested on the last remaining major Google competitor in the browser market: Firefox.
However, Mozilla is not completely closing the door on JPEG XL. Should the use of the JPEG successor format increase significantly, one would have to re-evaluate whether the file format could also be integrated into the standard Firefox. In that case, however, it would be a product management decision, not an ideological endorsement of an open, new web standard.
See also:
(jvo)
