Matt Mullenweg 7:00 pm on September 11, 2022

WebP in Core for 6.1

I’ve been reading through all the conversation and issues here. I am interested in supporting new formats and improving performance, but I think this change being pushed by default to users when they upgrade to 6.1 is a lot for right now, including with some of the clunky interactions OSes still have around webp (and HEIC!) files.

I’m happy for support for working for webp and HEIC files to stay in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., as we should be liberal in what we accept and work with, but not with the change to convert everything to webp when JPEGs are uploaded.

This is excellent territory for a canonical pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, a concept I think every Make team should be exploring a lot more as a place to experiment and push functionality, much like we have with MP6 and GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ in the past. I think the plugin directory needs more collaborative, community-developed, and non-commercial or no-upgrade plugins that do something well, and make teams are the perfect groups to develop and maintain those. It’s the ethos and process of core applied to plugins, that then we can officially recommend and feature in the plugin directory, and also allows us to keep core light or give more time for the ecosystem around something (like WebP) to mature.

Will do a second post on canonical plugins.

Matt Mullenweg 7:04 pm on September 11, 2022

Follow-up post: Canonical Plugins Revisited
snoringdragon 5:22 am on September 12, 2022

Webp support should be in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. instead of canonical pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. Canonical plugin will further increase the confusion in the WordPress ecosystem which is already unnecessarily complex.
To certain extent, it’s a fancy word to say – go make plugin.
It’s much more worthwhile to create a plugin instead of canonical plugin where you need to follow so many WordPress rules.
zero4281 11:10 pm on September 12, 2022

I’m happy for support for working for webp and HEIC files to stay in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., as we should be liberal in what we accept and work with, but not with the change to convert everything to webp when JPEGs are uploaded.

I don’t quite understand this part of your opinion. Why would WordPress support multiple image types without generating thumbnails in multiple types? I don’t see how that would fit into a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party well, at least not permanently. The Performance team already has a development plugin in to test these features before merging into Core.
Adam Silverstein 5:41 pm on September 21, 2022

@matt,

Thanks for sharing your concerns about WebP usability.

The performance/image team recognizes the importance of your concerns and would like to learn more about and address them. We would furthermore like to provide you with some more context that might be useful as we consider the next steps towards bringing the benefits of WebP to WordPress.

The main concern you raised is that “this change being pushed by default to users when they upgrade to 6.1 is a lot for right now, including with some of the clunky interactions OSes still have around webp (and HEIC!) files”.

Are you referring to concerns regarding issues when downloading WebP images from a WordPress site and then trying to use them in another context? We agree this is an important consideration and spent significant efforts researching cross-browser/OS compatibility. Our findings showed that overall compatibility is very good, and some outliers like Photoshop have shipped support for WebP recently. Still, this concern is important and we must make sure we have not missed some important cases. Do you have in mind some specific flows, applications or interactions that don’t work well? Could you expand a bit on what signals you would use to assess the appropriate readiness level of the ecosystem for WordPress to adopt WebP by default?

We may not want to include the HEIC format into the discussion about WebP as overall OS/browser support is way lower for HEIC (even Safari lacks support), and although wordpress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ supports it, HEIC is not supported in WordPress (i.e. users uploading HEIC files to WordPress get an error message). Also, WebP is a standardized open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. format, HEIC is not.

An important aspect to consider in this discussion is that WebP is already the default image format on wordpress.com’s free tier, as well as on sites powered by Jetpack with the Performance module enabled. We believe that such support on wordpress.com and Jetpack is good for their users, and we expect it would be good for all WordPress users. Do you see differences in the needs of wordpress.com users and the broader WordPress user base?

We look forward to further engaging with you on WebP and many other important initiatives the performance team are (and will be) working on to improve WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. Now that the feature has been reverted, we can explore how and when to move WebP forward. For now, we will continue developing WebP support in the Performance Lab feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. and continue engaging with the community to ensure WebP is well tested. Finally: this decision came as a surprise to all of us on the performance team. Any thoughts on improving feature implementation processes and communication to avoid such surprises in the future?
- Blobfolio 7:25 pm on September 21, 2022
  
  Thanks Matt! I couldn’t agree more.
Andrew Wilder 4:19 pm on September 26, 2022

Thank you, @matt.

Fundamentally, I think the reason the WebP proposal received so much pushback from the community is because it would exacerbate an already problematic situation: The way WordPress currently deals with thumbnails.

I regularly work with sites that have thousands of images in the library, and which generate anywhere from ~30 to ~50 thumbnails for every image uploaded. This adds up extremely fast (often reaching into the millions of files) which can cause issues with backups, server storage, and more. (And lord help us if they aren’t keeping the images organized by month & year!)

For years, there have been calls for an “on first use” thumbnail generation system in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. There was discussion about this on the WebP proposal blogblog (versus network, site) post back in March, and on the primary TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. – but the Performance Team decided it was outside their scope:
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/55443
https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/28/enabling-webp-by-default/

If we can revamp how and when Core generates thumbnails — only generating ones that are actually needed — that would solve a huge issue with WordPress while simultaneously giving us lots of headroom to include generation to newer formats. This is a massive undertaking, of course, but seems worthy of consideration for 2023.
- Matt Mullenweg 8:40 am on September 28, 2022
  
  I think dynamically generating thumbnails on demand and caching them to disk would be an awesome canonical pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
- Andrew Wilder 6:27 pm on September 28, 2022
  
  Hmm, I thought I understood where you were going with canonical plugins, but now perhaps I’m confused by what you intend for those.
  
  It seems to me only generating thumbnails that are actually needed is something that should “just work” as part of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. If we were designing a thumbnail system from scratch in a new CMS, wouldn’t that be an ideal approach?
  
  I’m curious why you think it would be better as a canonical pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, rather than a feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. with the goal of eventually merging into core?
  
  Thanks again!

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WebP in Core for 6.1

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