llbbl/Safari Needs WebP Support

## Safari Needs WebP Support

It has been brought up before, but creating a new post to start the conversation again.


* 80% of the current global web traffic supports WebP
* All the other current browsers support WebP
* If Safari on iOS and Mac were to support it, we would see an additional 12-14% of the entire web traffic that supports WebP [bringing total to ~94%]
* Apple is the only/last of the major browser vendors to not support WebP
* Chrome has had at least partial support of WebP since 2011 almost 2 years before Blink was forked from Webkit
* WebP was released 8 (almost 9) years ago
* The WebP Patent/License restrictions only pertains to the implementation of WebP in other browsers, preventing patent disputes over WebP. (There shouldn't be an issue here)


Please visit:

https://caniuse.com/#search=webp


Why This Is Important


* WebP is better than JPEG and better than PNG
* WebP supports Alpha Transparency similarly as PNG
* "Animated GIFs converted to lossy WebPs are 64% smaller, while lossless WebPs are 19% smaller"
* "WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index."
* Web Design/Developers can stop having to support multiple image types and trying to guess what your browser supports
* A global reduction of internet traffic by something less than 25% is still not a small number
* Less Web traffic resulting from smaller images and Less Hard Drive space required to store the images can have a significant impact on the global electricity usage


Cisco estimates global IP traffic to be 254 Exabytes (EB) of data per month by 2020. How much of that is images? 50 EB, 20 EB?


The industry switching to WebP could potentially save 5 to 12.5 EB of data transmitted every month. This is a totally made up statistic but what if it was not far from the truth? Converting this into a number we are more familiar with, that is 12,500,000,000 Gigabytes (GB) of data that would be potentially saved.


Previous discussion:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250073758


References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP
https://chromium.googlesource.com/webm/libwebp/+/refs/heads/master/PATENTS
https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/c_study
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html

	It has been brought up before, but creating a new post to start the conversation again.


	* 80% of the current global web traffic supports WebP
	* All the other current browsers support WebP
	* If Safari on iOS and Mac were to support it, we would see an additional 12-14% of the entire web traffic that supports WebP [bringing total to ~94%]
	* Apple is the only/last of the major browser vendors to not support WebP
	* Chrome has had at least partial support of WebP since 2011 almost 2 years before Blink was forked from Webkit
	* WebP was released 8 (almost 9) years ago
	* The WebP Patent/License restrictions only pertains to the implementation of WebP in other browsers, preventing patent disputes over WebP. (There shouldn't be an issue here)


	Please visit:

	https://caniuse.com/#search=webp


	Why This Is Important


	* WebP is better than JPEG and better than PNG
	* WebP supports Alpha Transparency similarly as PNG
	* "Animated GIFs converted to lossy WebPs are 64% smaller, while lossless WebPs are 19% smaller"
	* "WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index."
	* Web Design/Developers can stop having to support multiple image types and trying to guess what your browser supports
	* A global reduction of internet traffic by something less than 25% is still not a small number
	* Less Web traffic resulting from smaller images and Less Hard Drive space required to store the images can have a significant impact on the global electricity usage


	Cisco estimates global IP traffic to be 254 Exabytes (EB) of data per month by 2020. How much of that is images? 50 EB, 20 EB?


	The industry switching to WebP could potentially save 5 to 12.5 EB of data transmitted every month. This is a totally made up statistic but what if it was not far from the truth? Converting this into a number we are more familiar with, that is 12,500,000,000 Gigabytes (GB) of data that would be potentially saved.



	Previous discussion:

	https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250073758



	References:

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)
	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP
	https://chromium.googlesource.com/webm/libwebp/+/refs/heads/master/PATENTS
	https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/c_study
	https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html