Developer]
The JPEG was around for greater than twenty years now. When technology gets that old, you either take it out back or teach it some new tricks. Mozilla is determining the latter whilst it prepares for a future where the previous is a reality.
Mozilla announced Wednesday that it’s engaged on a brand new project called mozjpeg so one can improve JPEG compression without breaking browsers. The non-profit says it’s doing this since the modern Web uses pictures greater than ever before and this could really decelerate a page’s loading time. With new compression techniques, they could decrease the time it takes Firefox to load a page filled with images.
Even though its building mozjpeg, Mozilla doesn’t see JPEG remaining the dominant image format on the internet. For sure, moving to a brand new image format brings with its own unique challenges so mozjpeg is being built to aid improve JPEG encoding even while the internet moves to a brand new format.
Production JPEG encoders have largely been stagnant relating to compression efficiency, so replacing JPEG with something better have been a frequent topic of dialogue. The key downside to moving faraway from JPEG is that it might require facing a multi-year period of relatively poor compatibility with the world’s deployed software. We (at Mozilla) don’t doubt that algorithmic improvements will make this worthwhile in some unspecified time in the future, possibly soon. Even after a transition begins in earnest though, JPEG will remain used widely.
Given this example, we wondered if JPEG encoders have really reached their full compression potential after 20+ years. We talked to plenty of engineers, and concluded that the answer’s “no,” even in the constraints of robust compatibility requirements. With feedback on promising avenues for exploration in hand, we started the ‘mozjpeg’ project.
If that you must try mozjpeg for yourself, Mozilla released version 1.0 today. It’s a fork of libjpeg-turbo with “jpgcruch” functionality added for good measure. They discovered this mixture can reduce jpeg file sizes by 10 percent and they’re obviously hoping they will increase this with help from the community.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Mozilla’s Mozjpeg Should Make Firefox Faster 14 hours ago