Why is it nothing seems to disable WebP in newer browsers, but older browsers can?

[Cyber Akuma]

webP is driving me nuts, it feels like every day another site that used to not use it is now using that accursed format. Plugins/browser settings to disable it aren't working either and still force it through.  
 
Yes yes, I know I can convert it to another format using all sorts of image editors or a plugin, the two problems with that are quality loss since you are converting from a compressed format to a compressed format, and pretty much none of them support animated gifs that get served as webp.  
 
Thing is, everyone is telling me that's just how the image is on the server, but if you use an older browser that is clearly not true. I still had an older version of Waterfox Classic left over on an install on one of my systems, and when I use that, I always get the original jpg, png, gif, whatever the image was. So clearly the servers CAN serve up the original image (and in many cases I can even see .jpg or whatever at the end of a direct image link... but when I try to save it it's webp) and the server can be told to serve up the original image instead of webp, but nobody appears to have made any plugin or gotten any solution for making modern browsers somehow tell the server not to serve them the webp version of an image even though clearly most of these servers can. I always just get people insisting that the original file is in webp format on the server, that it's not possible, or that you need to convert it after downloading it. The fact that Waterfox Classic can get the original non-webp version of the image shows how none of that is true.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Youtube is my favourite, if you disable webp then the site still tries to use them and you get blank images everywhere.

 

What's worse is some photo sharing sites use it and the webp images look garbage compared to the original jpegs.

 

webp and HEIC are spawns of the devil, they destroy image quality. (though admittedly its perfectly serviceable for how Youtube use webp)

[PowerPCFan]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Youtube is my favourite, if you disable webp then the site still tries to use them and you get blank images everywhere.

 

What's worse is some photo sharing sites use it and the webp images look garbage compared to the original jpegs.

 

webp and HEIC are spawns of the devil, they destroy image quality. (though admittedly its perfectly serviceable for how Youtube use webp)

HEIC and WebP are my least favorite formats, I’d rather a TIFF or even a PDF! (Obviously JPEG, PNG, GIF, and SVG are still the best - for different use cases.)

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, Cyber Akuma said:

Thing is, everyone is telling me that's just how the image is on the server, but if you use an older browser that is clearly not true. I still had an older version of Waterfox Classic left over on an install on one of my systems, and when I use that, I always get the original jpg, png, gif, whatever the image was. So clearly the servers CAN serve up the original image (and in many cases I can even see .jpg or whatever at the end of a direct image link... but when I try to save it it's webp) and the server can be told to serve up the original image instead of webp, but nobody appears to have made any plugin or gotten any solution for making modern browsers somehow tell the server not to serve them the webp version of an image even though clearly most of these servers can. I always just get people insisting that the original file is in webp format on the server, that it's not possible, or that you need to convert it after downloading it. The fact that Waterfox Classic can get the original non-webp version of the image shows how none of that is true.

Depends on the server.
In late 2023 we (not disclosing which company) updated all of our servers to automatically convert newly uploaded images to webp and serve that only.
Also, we've gone through old images and converted them to webp as well, just with different presets so that the perceived quality doesn't change much.
Obviously, this was not done by hand, everything was automated... So a small percentage might end up looking like garbage but the vast majority should look fine.

Webp from our perspective is a win-win. Less storage is needed, and faster load times for our clients.

 

1 hour ago, Cyber Akuma said:

Yes yes, I know I can convert it to another format using all sorts of image editors or a plugin, the two problems with that are quality loss since you are converting from a compressed format to a compressed format, and pretty much none of them support animated gifs that get served as webp.  

Compression isn't an issue, lossy compression to lossy compression is.

FYI webp has both lossless and lossy modes...
Don't blame the format, blame the services for opting to save as much space & bandwith as possible. 

 

Also, animated gifs?
Now that is a format that needs to die already, looks like a turd and is huge.

 

2 hours ago, Cyber Akuma said:

(and in many cases I can even see .jpg or whatever at the end of a direct image link... but when I try to save it it's webp)

Just because it has .jpeg in the URL doesn't mean the image you are seeing is .jpg.

I can put prettyimage.whatever and it can load just fine in your browser.

Here is an example:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/cardfight/images/9/9b/BT08-074EN-C.jpg

Look at the Content-Type and Content-Disposition headers.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, PowerPCFan said:

HEIC and WebP are my least favorite formats, I’d rather a TIFF or even a PDF! (Obviously JPEG, PNG, GIF, and SVG are still the best - for different use cases.)

...as if .TIF/.TIFF or PDF are bad options? 

[da na]

I use "Don't Accept WebP" extension on Firefox and I've never had a problem with it. 

[PowerPCFan]

2 minutes ago, da na said:

...as if .TIF/.TIFF or PDF are bad options? 

Well I don’t love TIFF and PDF isn’t even an image format so it’s terrible for images

I know TIFF can be a great format, but PNG will always be my #1 favorite. 

[da na]

Just now, PowerPCFan said:

Well I don’t love TIFF and PDF isn’t even an image format so it’s terrible for images

I know TIFF can be a great format sometimes, but PNG will always be my #1 favorite. 

True, PDF is not great for images.

TIFF is great for lossless files with stupid high quality... I love my 400MB 4K images lol

[Cyber Akuma]

3 minutes ago, da na said:

I use "Don't Accept WebP" extension on Firefox and I've never had a problem with it. 

 

Didn't work for me, and apparently it's been asking for a lot of permissions lately.

 

 

[duncannah]

Just deal with it, the format is more than 13 years old.