As Google continue to take over the web aim to make the web faster they recently announced that they are creating a new image format, called WebP.

P and

Following in a similar theme to their WebM video format, the aim is to optimise and reduce file sizes of images used in websites. This is an admirable and ambitious project but one which may be too large a task for a single organisation to take on.

Is it the right time for a project of this type and scale? Many would agree - there is a lot of change and progression across the web right now and, as each browser competes to be the most up to date, there couldn't be a better time to introduce a new image format. After all, it's success solely depends on browsers supporting the format. So what makes this important right now? As Google stated in their announcement, today's websites are heavily image based and this accounts for a lot of web traffic (about 65% per site page according to Google). This obviously slows peoples web experience, which is an important aspect of websites as they are accessed by a lot of different devices - many of which, being mobile based or accessed via 3G, are reliant on fully optimised websites for fast and efficient loading.

It's clear from the examples sown WebP offers a lot in terms of optimisation but it's success as a format depends getting Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Adobe on board. For browsers take up should be similar to that of WebM, with everyone adopting it in some form or other. The key will be getting support across Adobe's creative suites. Until developers and designers can save out images in this format easily take up of this or any other format will be slow.