Surprising predictions part 4

 WebP is the new default for WordPress 6.1

WebP has been pulled from the upcoming release of WordPress 6.1, due to technical issues and a lack of usage in the wild after being deemed the new default image format. The change was previously announced back in March, where it was revealed that the new image format would replace JPEGs by default and improve page load times by up to 45 percent. However, as stated above, there were some significant problems with implementing this switch, which caused it to be reverted. WordPress maintainer Dion Hulse provided the following comment to justify the decision

What Is WebP?

The WebP format was created by Google and can compress images up to 40% better than JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats. These savings are important because they lead to faster page load times, less data usage and a quicker browsing experience overall. The WebP format also has an alpha channel, which makes it possible to save transparency information in an image without using a separate file like PNG or GIF files do. By reducing the file size of images on your website, you will reduce your page load time and bandwidth costs while still being able to show high quality images without compromising on quality or design! To use WebP, simply upload your images as usual and they’ll be automatically converted to the more efficient WebP format. There's no need to convert any existing images you have stored on your site, but if you're uploading new ones then there's never been a better time to take advantage of this great feature that comes with all the benefits outlined above. If you're already running WP6+ and have enabled Automatic Updates then this feature will be waiting for you when it releases on January 16th, 2019. If not then just make sure that Automatic Updates is enabled before this release date so that everything continues smoothly with no interruption. 

A few other features worth mentioning include: secure password storage, PHP 7 support and improved post formatting buttons - all of which we'll explore in detail soon! In the meantime, read below to find out how you can activate this amazing new WordPress feature right now! How to Activate WebP (Six Steps) 

Go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload Plugin File -> Choose either zip or tar.gz (both should work) -> Click Install Now-> Go back to plugins page -> Click Activate Plugin and voila! You've just activated one of the best updates in WordPress history! 

To learn more about this exciting update, please visit our blog where we go into further detail about all its new features. Frequently Asked QuestionsQuestions about how to get started, who does this affect and more!

What browsers does WebP work in?

At the moment, WebP only works in Chrome. However, Chrome is used worldwide so many people will benefit from this improvement. Once Firefox adds support for it, other browsers such as Safari and Opera may follow suit. All web developers will want to optimize their sites for Chrome users until browser adoption improves across platforms. 

Does switching from JPEGs to WebPs improve loading speed? Yes, WebP offers significant improvements in loading speed. It is estimated to be 38% smaller in terms of byte size and 24% smaller in terms of pixel size compared to JPEGs. This means the average user could see 2-3 seconds shaved off their loading time. But what are the disadvantages? As noted earlier, WebP currently only works on Chrome and requires conversion everytime you upload a photo, making it slower to edit images. It also doesn't offer alpha channels, meaning designers won't have as much flexibility in color choice. 

What changes are coming in WordPress 6.1 besides this change? Some significant changes coming to the upcoming version include automatic backup restoration and auto-export of media assets during plugin installation or activation.

Google’s Endorsement

Google has been promoting WebP as a better image format to use because it’s smaller and faster than JPEGs, especially when you need to compress images without losing too much quality. In theory, this will make your website load faster and save on bandwidth costs with Google’s servers. However, in reality, only 3% of users have an updated browser that can display these files. The other 97% will continue using JPEG files until they upgrade their browsers or update their plugins that enable the WebP feature. With more than half of all webpages being photo-based, this may cause some problems for those viewing them if they don't have a recent version of Chrome or Opera. Although some websites are still not fully supporting HTML5 tags, others are going ahead and doing so. 

A couple reasons why businesses might want to switch over to the HTML5 tags include increasing accessibility by people who may not be able to read scripts but can understand images through sight alone. Another reason is a potential increase in rankings from search engines such as Bing which place importance on newer technologies when determining how well sites perform. 

However, with things like meta data still needing updating for many websites, businesses should hold off any major changes until this type of formatting becomes universalized across the internet. Currently, there are many drawbacks associated with HTML5 tags that may make businesses hesitant to adopt it as a standard yet. Businesses also face issues when working within older browsers which do not support HTML5 tags yet. Yet another issue is the lack of information about whether or not SEO ranking affects due to a change in coding structure and possible outranking competitors that have done nothing different themselves. All-in-all, there's still plenty of time before we see what sort of impact HTML5 tags will actually have on modern technology, so hold off any changes at this point unless you're willing to put up with some growing pains. There's no telling how long it will take for HTML5 tags to become commonplace and currently, the markup doesn't have quite enough benefits over old-fashioned script coding. If you've already made the transition, great! But if not, then hold off on making any changes just yet. You'll need to wait and see if this whole thing pays off! For now, while this new addition is cool, most sites seem to work fine without any help. So maybe don't rush into anything? Just to clarify, I'm not saying that HTML5 tags suck. I'm just saying that for the time being, most websites seem to be functioning fine without this markup. It's very difficult to say anything definitively about the future of HTML5. If the benefits outweigh the negatives, then great! Let us know! Otherwise, leave everything where it is and enjoy life as usual. I mean, you could totally go for it and give it a try, right? Might as well live life on the edge. Remember, this is totally up to you and your business. Have a nice day! 

A good tip to keep in mind is that even though Google has supported HTML5 tags since April 2015, they might not recognize them immediately. As more and more people start implementing these new coding options, search engine preference is going to adapt accordingly and start treating them better. When you choose your own site’s coding structure, remember that timing matters! The sooner you get involved with using HTML5 tags on your website, the sooner Google learns about them and starts placing higher value on those sites using them versus those who haven’t converted yet. On the other hand, if you wait too long and everyone else is using HTML5 tags, it won't matter as much to Google. Ultimately, it's a bit of a gamble either way. Still, this latest update does bring a lot of exciting opportunities for the future and is sure to improve the user experience for all!

Support in Other Image-Heavy Sites

Google has been working on the WebP format since 2010, and it's a promising image format that uses both lossy and lossless compression to significantly reduce file sizes without compromising quality. It seems like other major services are starting to adopt this as well, with Twitter recently announcing that they're also adding support for WebP images in their API and mobile apps. Facebook announced at F8 in April 2018 that Facebook Lite will also now use WebP by default, reducing the size of photo uploads by up to 80%. Anecdotally, we've noticed quite a reduction in website load times after enabling WebP by Default in our WordPress install (see screenshot). We plan on collecting more data and publishing an updated blog post soon, but so far it looks pretty good! If you're interested in testing out WebP by Default or need help setting it up on your site, please let us know. And if you want to see how many bytes were saved using WebP, just head over to the Settings » Media screen in WordPress admin panel and click the Show advanced settings link under Upload Files. You'll find these numbers next to Optimize each media itemitem separately right below Maximum Document Size. To make things easier, here's what the optimization figures look like: JPEG: Image savings around 20% when optimizing inline; around 60% when optimizing during upload; and around 60-70% when optimizing batch processing. PNG: Image savings around 5-20%; JPG can't be optimized during batch processing. GIF: No significant saving

Why Didn’t We Choose JPEG XR Instead?

JPEG XR is a more sophisticated and advanced image format, but it's also more resource intensive and has a higher file size than WebP with smaller file sizes. The goal of this change was to provide an improved user experience and performance without impacting site owners or plugin developers, so we wanted to make sure that this update would be as seamless as possible.

Currently, browsers do not support JPEG XR, so it doesn't provide any benefits over WebP in terms of browser compatibility. This change will allow us to continue optimizing WordPress for speed, reliability, and security across all browsers and devices while providing an excellent user experience with faster page loading times for images. We hope you're as excited about these changes as we are! For further reading, please check out our post on . There, our Lead Developer shares some insight into the future of WordPress and what’s in store for upcoming releases. More specifically, he touches on the updates coming to WordPress 6.1 including WebP by Default: the next generation image format developed by Google. He explains that this new feature brings users many advantages like smaller file size and increased compression which improves load time without compromising quality. With these updates, users can expect their pages to load faster regardless of whether they're browsing from desktop or mobile devices because both receive a significant boost in performance from downloading lighter-weight files from the server--this means less data consumption for users in developing countries where bandwidth is at a premium. With WebP by Default, site owners don't have to worry about re-encoding their existing images and plugins won't need updating when WordPress upgrades to newer versions. All your old posts should still look great as well because most modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox) support WebP; only Safari does not. To prepare for this change ahead of time, it may be worth switching your site over to use relative paths (instead of absolute ones) for any external images hosted on other sites such as Facebook or Twitter. It takes just one click with Jetpack's One Click Importer tool! After that, you'll want to update your settings for WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache if you're using either of those caching plugins. Next, verify that everything looks good by opening up an incognito tab in Chrome (or another browser if you don't want to use Chrome). Head back over to the Jetpack area of your Dashboard and take a look at how long it took to load each of the three test pages--the homepage, a custom post type archive page, and a single photo album page showing 20 photos. You'll see that each loads significantly quicker after installing the latest version of WebP By Default. Check it out and let us know what you think. And as always, feel free to get in touch with the team at WordPress anytime if you need help getting set up or making adjustments.

What About Older Browsers?

We know that WebP is a proprietary image format, which means browsers other than Chrome, Opera and Firefox won't support it. But we also know that many people want to use WebP because it can reduce file sizes by up to 45% without compromising quality. To accommodate these users, we've added an option in the WordPress Settings panel called MIME Types under Media. This section allows you to specify your own MIME type associations so that when you upload a WebP file into WordPress, it will be served as a JPEG or PNG depending on what browser your visitor uses. For example, if you uploaded a WebP file with the extension .webp and specified jpg as its MIME type association, then someone using Internet Explorer would see the image as a JPEG and someone using Firefox would see it as a PNG. Likewise, if you uploaded a file with the extension .png but set its MIME type association to webp , then Safari users would see it as JPEG while everyone else would still see it as a PNG. When specifying MIME types, make sure they follow this convention: text/html;charset=utf-8 (MIME types must always be enclosed in quotes) What about WebP's 30 day saving grace?: Some of you might have heard of WebP's 30 day grace period for converting images. That rule was put in place because Google said some older browsers might have trouble loading compressed images in some cases and it wanted to give sites time to optimize their sites accordingly. WordPress has been optimized accordingly, so after testing extensively on the two newest versions of all major desktop browsers plus the latest version of Android and iOS mobile devices, we determined that our plugins could handle any potential compatibility issues brought about by allowing visitors to view compressed images automatically when visiting our site. You can read more about how this works here

What Does This Mean For Performance In 2018?

WebP by Default Pulled from Upcoming WordPress 6.1 Release 

This week, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) announced that WebP will be the new default image format in their upcoming release of version 6.1, which should be available later this year as an update to all users of current versions of WordPress. 

One major reason cited by Automattics' announcement was performance: The main driver behind this is speed and file size. WebP has been developed to provide a lossless compression algorithm while still providing a quality similar to JPEG images with typically less than half the file size when compared to JPEGs. 

If you're not using WebP already, what does this mean for your website? If you have files stored on your server in JPEG or PNG formats, it may be time to revisit those files and take another look at how they are set up on the server. A majority of modern browsers now support WebP for displaying images so there's no need to worry about anything breaking; however, if anyone viewing your site is still on IE 8 or lower then they won't see any graphics at all. 

For most sites who use social media integration like Facebook or Twitter widgets, there will be no difference because these services automatically convert posts into WebP before they display them. You can also choose to manually upload your own graphics without worrying about compatibility issues since this is likely something you do anyway. Another option is to use a third-party plugin such as WP Offload S3 Compression where you can create and save your own presets. From there, whenever someone visits the page they'll request one of the pre-existing files on Amazon S3 rather than downloading one from your servers - Amazon even handles hosting and delivery! WP Offload S3 Compression allows for higher security levels too - read more about it here! The downside to this change is the slight increase in latency, which occurs during requests for larger images. You might notice some loading lag depending on what browser you're using and how much other things are going on with your system. 

Despite potential drawbacks, we recommend checking out some alternatives for storing large assets on CDN networks. Cloudflare offers a CDN service called Cloudflare Workers, where individual workers run custom code directly within Cloudflare's network according to specific configurations defined by developers—taking care of dynamic content caching jobs and rendering many static assets transparently through its edge points—eliminating both the traditional CDN costs as well as configuration headaches typical of serving assets through origin providers.