Firefox 158 Now Available With JPEG-XL Support By Default
- Reference: 0186278534
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/10/12/2131234/firefox-158-now-available-with-jpeg-xl-support-by-default
- Source link:
> At long last, Firefox 158 is ready to go with JPEG-XL image support as an alternative to the likes of WebP, JPEG, PNG, and GIF. The default HTTP Accept header for image requests also now supports "image/jxl" for the JPEG-XL image format. Prior releases of Firefox had JPEG-XL gated by an experimental option.
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> Firefox 158 also now supports filling forms faster in Smart Window when clicking into a form field or selecting Fill from sources. On the developer side, CSS typed arithmetic are now supported to use functions like calc() to divide two values of the same data type even if of different units.
[2]Developer changes and [3]release binaries can be found at their respective links.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-158-Released
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/158
[3] https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/158.0/
Unfortunately named JPEG-XL (Score:2)
I read the reasoning (below) for the name on the Wikipedia [1]page [wikipedia.org], but it still seems unfortunate for something that's suppose to be smaller than regular JPEG. :-)
> The name refers to the design committee (JPEG), the X designates the series of its image coding standards published since 2000 (JPEG XT/XR/XS), and L stands for "long-term", highlighting the intent to create a future-proof, long-lived format to succeed JPEG/JFIF.
It's like trying to figure out if the [2]LHC [wikipedia.org] is simply very big (Large Hadron-Collider) or just for smashing big particles (Large-Hadron Collider) - or both. :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XL
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
XL ?? (Score:2)
I'm not an information theory guy, but I thought compression were supposed to make things smaller. Sounds like JPEG ate a bunch of donuts instead. Get it on Wegovy/GLP-1 inhibitors ASAP.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't looked up the history, but I would imagine that the "XL" is for the fact that it can handle images up to 1B x 1B pixels (1 exapixel).
Re: (Score:2)
""XL" is for the fact that it can handle images up to 1B x 1B pixels (1 exapixel)."
So we will have to wait for the AI bubble to burst before anybody can afford enough storage for such images.
Not today, begining TOMORROW, including ESR (Score:3)
Actually, is not available until tomorrow, Oct 13, as per:
[1]https://whattrainisitnow.com/r... [whattrainisitnow.com]
(The official Mozilla FireFox calendar)
Also tomorrow, the new ESR (ESR 153) will enter the Automatic Update Channel (as ESR 153.5.0), before that, if you wanted the new ESR, you had to manually download and install.
[1] https://whattrainisitnow.com/release/?version=158
Tis the week of JPEG XL? (Score:2)
Chrome just added it a couple days ago. I guess that must mean an upstream library was finally deemed production ready. Also presumably MS Edge will get it within the next few days downstream of chromium.
Does it fix the stupid UI chages made in 157? (Score:2)
Or at least give us a simple way to change the look without having to play is CSS. Now that would be news.
Normally I don't care much about about the UI color choices but that purple was anything but calming.
Did new features always take this long? (Score:2)
Old timers, how long did stuff used to take. Did the original JPEG take like, over a decade to go from start to actually getting into use?
Re: wtf is JPEG-XL (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been numerous articles about it recently. You have the internet. No need to stop the class just because you're the only lazy ignoramus around here.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Thanks for sharing that you don't understand what an editor's job is, or what the purpose of an article summary is.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a little sticker for knowing what Firefox is tho. You must be good at computers.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't know either, but I do know what JPEG is, and I have a pretty good idea about what XL might mean, so I was able to suss out that it might be a new and improved lossy-compressed image format.
Of course, approaching the problem rationally like that doesn't provide me an opportunity to make childish insults, but that's just one of the downsides of being a grown-up that I'll have to live with.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, to get technical, they switched from using the Discrete Cosine Transform algorithm to the Obese Conspicuous Fattening algorithm.
Re: (Score:2)
That algorithm should come with a GLP-1 licensure.
Re: (Score:2)
Both lossy and lossless, and [1]so much more [slashdot.org].
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24117670&cid=66368286
Re:wtf is JPEG-XL (Score:4, Insightful)
It's [1]this [slashdot.org].
And on the compression side, there's a lot of really cool stuff that lets it happen. For example, it dynamically resizes the blocks from 2x2 to 256x256, and they don't even have to be square. It may apply DCT in one, AFAS in another, etc - whatever is most efficient. It uses edge preserving filters to keep the edges of features clean. It can draw in splines and clone regions from one part of an image to another. Where it has to throw away high frequency noise (film grain, noisy textures, etc), it statistically samples the properties of the noise and saves that, and then regenerates equivalent noise. In "busy" areas, like say tree bark or whatnot (where the human eye isn't good at discerning changes), it throws away more precision there, and instead allocates it to details located in fragile flat areas, such as skin and shadows, that the eye is attracted to. It works in default in XYB colour space, based on the actual interactions of the cones in the eye, so it can aggressively quantize things which the brain cannot detect. And in the choice between fast but not-great Huffman coding vs. better but slow and patent-encumbered arithmetic coding, they instead use rANS, which is nearly as fast as Huffman but as efficient as arithmetic coding, and faces no patent challenges. Which is also why you can take a legacy JPEG and rapidly losslessly reincode as JPEG-XL and get a file that's ~20% smaller - you're swapping Huffman for rANS.
(That's the lossy mode - there's also a dedicated lossless mode)
[1] https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24117670&cid=66368286
Re: (Score:2)
JPEG for the horizontally gifted.