Support JPEG XL

[chi]

I think it's a great opportunity for Firefox to stand out by supporting JPEG XL before any other browser.

Imagine images served by Cloudflare and Cloudinary load faster and look better only with Firefox. Firefox was a pioneer of web technologies and it should win the title back, if Firefox just keep following Chrome without any differentiation, why would people choose Firefox?

If the decoder memory safety is a concern, maybe Mozilla can start a crowd funding campaign to sponsor a Rust decoder, even the campaign itself will attract reports and attentions for Firefox.

Mozilla argued AVIF was already supported as a same generation but clearly JPEG XL has many advantages:

• Much better encoding performance (AVIF is not suitable for realtime CDN optimization at all)
• lossless and better high fidelity (video codec based image format)
• HDR (there will be a billion of mobile devices with real good & bright screen in just a few years)
• Little generation loss (important for web)

Supports from Facebook, Adobe (they're adding export support), Intel and VESA, Krita, The Guardian, libvips, Cloudinary, Shopify

[Yoochan]

Amazing news. Things are moving forward!

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-Interest-JPEG-XL-Rust

edit : ninja'd 😄

[EmuAGR]

Here there is a pure Rust implementation of the decoder ( https://github.com/tirr-c/jxl-oxide ), go implement it now. What will be the next excuse?

[2mustange]

Well I assume once a Rust adaption from the Google team is complete it would make this a go and we should see some better image quality going forward

[RubenKelevra]

@2mustangeyou misunderstood something there. The rust implementation planned by Google is just a decoder.

[2mustange]

@RubenKelevraThanks. I missed that on my first read. But makes sense its a decoder. Hope we see some benefits seeing it written in rust

[cmscy]

well, if you check Bugzilla... for the last 2 years, there has been no progress on Firefox's end, and some of the dependencies, don't even have a maintainer, worse unless they get HDR working on Windows and Linux, JXL will never really work since it uses the build in ICC profiles, and you kinda need HDR for full support, or be apple and have proper HDR to SDR on the OS level... given windows 11 does has that...

[administrator]

I really hope the Ladybird Browser project will succeed. The only reason we all use Firefox is because it is not Chrome, not because it is a good browser.

[_wojtek]

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/09/iphone-16-pro-supports-jpeg-xl-format/ !!!

[ffffff]

>If they successfully contribute an implementation that satisfies these properties and meets our normal production requirements, we would ship it.

Sweet! Sounds promising, I'm feeling confident. It remains to be seen how long writing the decoder takes, but I think this is a great step for JPEG-XL and Firefox. The security concerns are valid, and Rust seems like a great language to tackle the issue.

[RubenKelevra]

> I really hope the Ladybird Browser project will succeed. The only reason we all use Firefox is because it is not Chrome, not because it is a good browser.

True. I switched to the first alpha of Chrome back in the day, as it was just superior to Firefox at that time.

I like Chrome, I just don't like how the project is run and some of the restrictions putin place on it.

I really hope Ladybird is not just ending up being a barebone browser, like Gnome Web or something like this. A modern browser needs Add-On support (and not just for Ad-Blocking).

[2mustange]

@cmscyWell HDR is now in development so that is one step closer

[BNF0]

+1 for JPEG XL support

Mozilla, please give Google the L here

[eli]

Here is some direct telemetry: Please enable this in standard release, it is already two barriers of entry with the config setting. If you make me install nightly then i might as well install librewolf. Was looking for the last straw anyway.

[VcSaJen]

Update from JPEG XL devs on Rust implementation:

Good news! The jxl-rs project (a safe and fast JPEG XL decoder implementation in Rust) is progressing well. We are currently on track to deliver the following milestones:

End of February 2025: Initial decoding capabilities and a preliminary API.
~April 2025: Aiming for a conforming decoder implementation, fully compliant with the JPEG XL specification.
~July 2025: Critical code paths fully SIMDified and with a finalized API.
This anticipated timeline should allow jxl-rs to be ready for browser integration in alignment with Interop 2025 goals.

We are also prepared to integrate jxl-rs into the main browsers.

We appreciate the community's continued interest and support. Please remember to treat each other with respect in all project discussions. A positive and collaborative environment is crucial for the success of JPEG XL.

Source

[ffffff]

Thanks for sharing, Vc, that's great. One more thread to follow for updates, too. Between this and switching to Zen, my Firefox interest is actually ending the year on a high note.