How is jpeg xl “hostile”, it’s just a new format. Does Chrome really need to support every new image format?
Everyone agreed that it was not just a major improvement, but actually the best option out of all the contenders out there. Even the Chrome team. The only ones who didn't agree were the AVIF team at Google, who had developed a competing standard. Well, whoever was on that team had some pull, because not long after Chrome landed JXL support in stable and everything was about to pick up some serious pace, they suddenly landed a commit that reverted everything to do with JXL support in Chrome, and that was that.
An immense, cross-industry effort undone by internal Google politics. That's what's hostile about this situation. JXL is still limping along, but Google's unilateral reversal hurt everyone's confidence in the project but also the entire process. Apparently it doesn't matter what everyone in the world thinks is the most appropriate format. What matters is Lord Google's favour.
That's also a good reason for others to drop support until licensing of these patents is clarified.
Maybe we should stop issuing patents for math problems?
If that were true, then browsers should drop support for VP8, VP9 and indeed AV1 because the MPEG-LA is claiming ownership of patents covering those codecs.
Wikipedia tells me the first of four parts of the jpeg xl standard was finalized less than two years ago, and the last part (barely) less than a year ago.
The idea that
a) browsers are bad if they're not adding a year-old image format to the web forever and
b) "everyone" knows what they're talking about with an image codec finalized less than a year ago
is pretty ludicrous.
It's a good format, it'll gain adoption.
I am saying that JPEG XL is a new format, which it is; any additional format that is supported means more code, more potential for bugs, more security issues (format parsing is one of the biggest sources of security issues).
Chrome had experimental support for it and then they dropped it. They still support PNG, normal JPEG.
I agree with the arguments against the current DRM and Manifest 3 content blocking was kind of misdirected (however… look at how Safari does it, it’s essentially the same)
Also I don’t think the same argument applies for Chrome as for OSes for example. You are not really locked in. Just use a different browser. It’s just web.