Opera embraces Google's open source JPEG killer

Slightly confused

Not entirely sure there's much point in Opera announcing support for WebP images until several years down the line when people, might, possibly, just about consider using it. A bit like PNG vs GIF - it was better and had no licence fee, but still very few images use PNG on the web.

Speed Dial looks remarkably similar to what Chrome does when you open a new tab, unless there's some difference I've not seen?

Would also be nice if Google would do a proxy thing for Chrome, like Opera is doing. Can forsee it being useful in Opera, but could also forsee it bankrupting them if the browser ever took a large market share.

Don't dislike Opera, but just not sure if it has any real purpose vs IE, Chrome or FF?

More Open "minefield" Source from Google

More code from Google under their IP Rights Grant (Patents).

Any company with a nice stock of patents (and which large one doesn't these days) will spend more time analysing the code to see if they're not shooting themselves in the foot for including this than probably creating a yet another format.

Also it offers nice patent protection to Google because companies will also think "will we ever need to include this code because their stupid format caught on?" before going ahead with other patent claims that may be covered in the code.

Generous of Google? Call me cynical, but I don't see it that way. Truly generous would have been open sourcing the code under the BSD licence with no strings attached.

Nice WebP support, Shame about the fanbois

I tried Opera on my Android, didn't like it. I tried Opera on my desktop, didn't like that either. I stick with the native browser on my phone and Chrome on my desktop. I'm in the majority. Deal with it.

I think the inclusion of WebP support is great. People forget that you have to have a widely deployed standard BEFORE developers start to code for it. Suggesting that it could have waited until wider use is just nonsense. Who designs websites that don't work in browsers?

Opera innovates and does an impressive job keeping up with most things, but suggesting that it's the best browser and people just don't know it is a bit cultish.

JPEG

Not long back, I was involved with a project using JPEG2000 encoding for images. The company involved particularly wanted a compression system which could stream a progressive image, resulting in the final image being lossless but intermediate stages being useable. JPEG2000 actually does a damn fine job of it. And for lossy-but-still-good images, it's a whole lot better than plain old JPEG. Shame it costs so much to license it though, which is why hardly any software supports it.

Opera vs Chrome

The Opera fan boys can make all the arguments they want for why Opera is better (and perhaps I even accept them) but most people that use Chrome have tried Opera and didn't like it.

I work in an office where Chrome is now almost universal, most of us having moved from Firefox but we all have tried Opera in the last few years and simply not got on with it.

Speed dial has contracted for some

Reading the official it appears that dedicated users have lost out big time in that the new Speed Dial is crippled in comparison.

Before you simply choose x columns by by rows but for some reason you had to alter the speeddial.ini to do so.

Its seems that it is now very much luck of the draw whether the new easy access but different speed dial works for you.

Fanboi Reality Distortion Field

Obviously my observations about Opera and it's lack of adoption went through some sort of reality distortion field that surrounds the most zealous of the Opera fanbois. You see, at no point did I say Chrome was the best browser. I said it was my personal choice and made no other assertions.

As far as I'm concerned any improvement Opera makes help drive the whole web forward, so I'm very pleased to hear news of progression. Of course that doesn't matter. Why? Well even when you try to be fair to Opera you still get a load of juvenile accusations and arguments, often based on what you didn't say anyway.

It really doesn't do Opera any favours either.

Improving image quality

There's no way to take a JPEG and re-encode it while "improving" image quality. All you can do is throw away data, you can't get it back.

You probably mean what the Google guy said - re-encode the image and reduce the filesize while maintaining image quality, or rather, not reduce it as much as you would have done while re-encoding in JPEG format to end up with equivalent filesize.

To the poster above who tried re-encoding a digital camera JPEG and found the filesize increased - you're testing the wrong thing. You need to start with a lossless format (e.g. a bitmap or PNG image which was generated direct from the camera e.g. a RAW conversion). Then try encoding the same image in JPEG and WebP with settings that result in the same perceived quality (this is the hard part) and compare the filesize. Or alternatively match the filesize and see which format has the higher perceived quality.