Apple has enabled by default support for the JPEG XL image format in Safari 17 beta and WebKit, which Google deprecated in Chrome last year. In Firefox, support for the JPEG XL format is available in nightly builds (enabled via image.jxl.enabled = true in about:config), but Mozilla remains neutral on promoting the format for now.
As an argument for removing experimental support for JPEG XL from the Chromium codebase, the lack of sufficient interest in the format from the ecosystem was mentioned. Since then, the situation has changed, and in addition to positive feedback from web developers and the community (representatives of Facebook, Adobe, Intel and VESA, Krita, The Guardian, libvips, Cloudinary, Shopify and the Free Software Foundation spoke out for JPEG XL support in Chrome), the format is now will be supported in Safari. Google continues to receive requests related to the return of the code for working JPEG XL in Chromium.
Google's arguments against including JPEG XL also cited the lack of sufficient additional benefits over existing formats. At the same time, the application page for adding support for JPEG XL to the Blink engine mentions such advantages as a size reduction of up to 60% compared to identical quality JPEG images and the presence of advanced features such as HDR, animation, transparency, progressive loading, smooth degradation at bitrate reduction, lossless JPEG compression (up to 21% JPEG reduction with the ability to restore the original state), support for up to 4099 channels and a wide range of color depths.
The JPEG XL codec is royalty-free and offers an open reference implementation under the BSD license. The technologies used in JPEG XL do not overlap with patented technologies, with the exception of Microsoft's patent for the rANS (range Asymmetric Number System) method, but for this patent, the fact of earlier use ("prior art") has been revealed.
Source: opennet.ru
