AVIF Image Format Test
In its latest release, ShortPixel Image Optimise plugin has introduced the ability to create AVIF formatted images (also known as AV1 images), alongside the current WebP format images.
AVIF is a relatively new format. It’s built by a consortium of companies, including Netflix, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft and Google. They are the Alliance for Open Media and the format is royalty free. Meaning it has a lot of potential to become a new standard, potentially overtaking WebP as the format of choice for web images. So it’s worth paying attention to.
The fact that ShortPixel have introduced it in their plugins options should tell you that it’s ready for prime time. So I thought I’d better check it out. I always worry about new formats for images. As a photographer who prides himself in the quality of his images, I don’t want any software reducing that quality on a visible level. But, if like basic JPG compression the visual results are indistinguishable from the native original image, then that’s all good by me. Why not serve up smaller image – they will naturally load faster and speed matters with all things websites.
This is just a bunch of images I’m uploading new to this site, so that they create webP and now AVIF copies. Viewable in Google Chrome and Firefox. You won’t see them in Apple Safari, as it will fall back to using the JPG versions. So in order of preference, using the SRCSET command, it will try and load AVIF if the browser supports it, then WebP, then JPG. So there will never be a blank space – just a different version of the image depending on the browser you are using.
There’s an interesting more in-depth review of the format here – AVIF has Landed
Using firefox for android and chrome
The images are not being displayed with firefox saying that image contains errors.
Interesting. Haven’t checked this in a while. But you are correct. The images should have a fallback to their JPG version or webP version. But it appears not to be working. I will investigate.