Why doesn't Firefox display WEBP images?
I made a slide on a site where I use images that were passed to me in WEBP format.
I thought everything was right as in Chrome everything was working. But I noticed that in Firefox (version 57.0.4) the images are not displayed.
I would like to know:
- Why doesn't Firefox render WEBP images? Lack of support?
WEBP is only experimental (this question needs to be answered considering we are in the year of 2018)?
Which browsers are supported?
2 answers
Why doesn't Firefox render WEBP images? Lack of support?
A: Yes, it is not supported.
Which browsers are supported?
Is WEBP just experimental(this question needs to be answered considering we are in the year 2018)?
A: about it being experimental, I believe not because Chrome supports WebP since version 23.
In Firefox for example there is a topic related to WebP support for the browser:
Updating the answer, since Firefox now supports WebP.
Support
Firefox has supported images .webp since January 2019, starting with version 65 ( See announcement). You can see all browsers that support .webp on the can I use website.... In the current versions listed, only Internet Explorer, Safari, iOS Safari and KaiOS Browser do not have this support.
Support state in June/2020:
1 partial support. Refers to not supporting lossless images ( lossless), alpha and animated WebP images.
2 partial support. Refers to the non-support of animated WebP images.
About WebP
About WebP being experimental, the answer is no. It was created on September 30, 2010, being experimental at the time, but by 2018 (date of the question) it was already something "concrete". No I found a date when it was considered "in production", but the first version of Google Chrome to support it (according to Can I use) was the 32, released in 2014.
WebP is just a format like all the others, but it has features that have made it increasingly adopted on the Internet, to be able to transfer images with fewer bytes with similar quality, more information can be found on the Google website , in the FAQ and in this Article . It is noteworthy that WebP is an Open Source format.
What About Internet Explorer and Safari?
Well, since Internet Explorer no longer has Microsoft support, we can see that Edge supports WebP, so Microsoft did "its part".
Already about Apple, although some news from 2016 (cnet and MacMagazine ) reported that Apple was testing WebP support, no news has emerged since then.
Some discussions have been generated on the Apple forum questioning why they don't have this support (1, 2, 3 e 4), but no concrete answer. Just as it was with Firefox, only time will tell if Safari will have this, but it has probably not yet been implemented because this format was created by Google and companies have their "intrigues".