Hi everyone in general, and moderators and webmaster in particular!

What I appreciate the most, regarding the beloved sister site, just after the continuous, incredible avalanche of generous gifts and treats (often the result of a hard and patient work) ...is its compatibility with very old browsers.

The fact is that I still use firefox 54 (dev edition) to navigate on both sites, mainly because of the incredible quality and functionalities of these good old XUL extensions, that I use intensively since longtime, and that I don't wanna abandon, for no price, never !

They are simply irreplaceable. When Mozilla took this sh*tty decision to stop all XUL development, I felt betrayed, and I'm not alone in this case!

But, there is a little 'but': FF 54 (and many other browsers from the same period) doesn't know how to read the google's webp image format, it simply doesn't have the necessary codec.

I just noticed that since few days, recent posts on sister site don't show entirely on my side due to the choice of this image format. I still see the content of course, it's just the image of presentation who's not there anymore.

So could it be possible to gently incite posters and uploaders to opt for traditional image formats (jpg/jpeg, png, gif, svg) for all their posting needs? Not as a hard rule engraved on stone, but as a nice courtesy...?

I (and I'm sure, others) would be eternally grateful!

. . .
(p.s. : ...Unless someone knows a smart way to add webp/webM decoding to my - almost as old as me -, grumpy grandpa Firefox 54? after all, Waterfox Classic have done it for FF 56... and it works perfectly!)

 

First of all, you'll likely have no chance but to switch browser versions sooner or later as old standards, including much more on html level than just the webp image format, simply won't be supported anymore by web page writers and developers. I find that unfortunate too but you can only swim against the current for so long.

Apart from that, are you sure there is no FF extension that supports webp decoding?

 

Another option worth a try might be to let FF tell the server that it does not accept .webp images:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/dont-accept-webp/

 

Thanks for your answer!

I'm indeed conscient of what you say, and I have several different browsers that I use for some sites when I can't do otherwise (mainly banking / administrative sites, where I have no choice but to switch) but for everything download related, nothing can replace the functionalities of my good old FF54 + DownThemAll 3.0.8 + Speed dial ++++ many others!

FF extensions / plugins to handle webp? It's exactly what I tried to search all day, but alas, I found no practical, simple way to do that... And unfortunately I'm not tech-savvy enough to implement this myself.

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

Thanks to have taken from your precious time to search!

Yes I saw this web extension the other day, but alas it is incompatible with FF 54 (dev edition)... In fact, all the extensions you see at the official site are only WebExtensions, a simplified extension format that's not compatible with my FF.

. . .
EDIT: What I've done: tried to inspect carefully the Waterfox Classic files, in the hope to discover a sort of "library" or .js part that I could copy / adapt to my FF, but I was unable to guess what is exactly the file responsible to decode and show webp images...

I tried in particular to decompress and examine everything's that's in "browser.ja" (a simple zip file in disguise containing the most important parts of the browser) for no result....

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

You can download XnConvert a 2.2mb free for personal use cross platform converter that I've been using for some time to convert webp from anywhere to any preferred pic format in a split second. try it you'll love it. It's so fast and even has a portable zipped version. It has many features, It allows you to automate editing of your photo collections: you can rotate, convert and compress your images, photos and pictures easily, and apply over 80 actions, like resize, crop, color adjustments, filter. hope this helps.

 

It's rare to see a techy luddite.

I'm joking, newer isn't always better.

 

Hey, thank you for the tip! I knew XnView very well, but didn't pay attention to the converter from the same team!

...But it's not exactly what I suggested, what I would like is not exactly to convert webp images, but simply a way to show (to see) them on the sister site, I just said that some images on the site don't show in my old browser, which have not the necessary decoder...

In other terms: I can see, read and hear (YT, Souncloud and audio demos work perfectly) absolutely everything that's on the sister site's pages, every web element, text, color and image is nicely rendered... except some images, those who are in the google's webp format.

If you analyze the recent sister site's posts since few days, you will realize that many images are in fact in the google format, not in the usual - traditional - formats. So it's perhaps not an important problem, it doesn't prevent to read and/or download anything, it just lesser the esthetics of the recent posts, which become just a formatted text, without image (= a little sad, if I may...).

 

Hi
Could you pm me the links of posts using webp image format?

You could use the lounge section at sister site to state this, it would be closer to the people you want to talk to.

 

This should help you : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490

Maybe also this : https://github.com/antimatter15/weppy

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

Hey, thank you Olymoon! I sent you most of the links! You're right, but I didn't dare to post in this section...

@jarredou : Thank you very much for these links!

1. The main problem regarding the github project, is that its state is very experimental, completely unachieved, the Readme says:

The accessory problem: it may require a recompilation of the entire browser to be integrated!? It's a thing I cannot do, of course I can learn but I'm sure I will miss a dependency, or two, or more, and compile on windows is far from being obvious for an eternal noobie like me...

In the past, I managed to compile some very, very simple things on Linux and on Mac, but Win is another piece of work, nothing is as accessible and obvious as in other OSes...

2. Though I studied the Mozilla bugpage, and I see there is a diff, here there seems to be a possibility to edit the FF .js listing and to add lines, but... I hope this library is not delivered in a binary form! Because if it's the case it means: recompile everything to include only few lines of code!

Thank you a lot for your time, it's really appreciated!

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-image-as-type/gabfmnliflodkdafenbcpjdlppllnemd?hl=en

 

Thank you for your link, @Sanskritter!

...Unfortunately it's an extension for Chrome, not for Firefox (perhaps it could be adapted, but I'm far from being sure of that, because most of these type of extensions work only with up-to-date versions of FF, and here it's not the case: I have FF v54!

And the goal of this extension is not to decode and to show images in realtime, but to convert a category of image... that my browser can't even show!

- - - - - - - -

UPDATE: Downloaded the webp library source code and winx64 binaries, directly from google.

It seems (yeah remember, this is stupid ignorant me, myself and I here) that I have to do two things to make it work:

1. Install the binaries someway in the FF v54.0b (aurora-dev edition) folder... or elsewhere?

2. Modify some internal javascript (with the help of a DIFF of some sort) so that the browser is systematically calling the gg lib each time I launch FF... Wow!

My very little nut brain is already overloaded, I have no idea how to concretely doing that...

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

There are the libwebp builds and sources archives: https://storage.googleapis.com/downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/index.html
Some doc is available here: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/download

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

Unbelievable. So FF 54 (we actually have FF 106) is a better browser than the newer ones. Hm. Because it renders websites with more warmth and analog fuzziness? And it is OK to ask any other persons to take care about the fact, that oneself refuses to accept better and safer performance? Sorry (not), that is a stark bit outrageous, don't you think? Yep, I think so. This stupidity to declare anything old garbage being the holy grail gives you a feeling of superiority? See: deliberate stupidity = superiority? And: you know anything about safety? And safety for others, that have your virus-infested mails in their incoming mails?

I don't believe that here really is said what I have read and understood. Unbelievable.

 

Thanks a LOT, @jarredou!

I've downloaded the libraries in two forms: source code and Winx64 binaries, I hope to be able to do something with it, following the DIFF in the Mozilla bug site, but honestly the task seems complicated by the fact that the DIFF source code is for recent, up-to-date versions of FF, I'm not sure it could be compatible with v54.0b (aurora-dev edition)...

 

One other and maybe easier option would be to create an userscript or a XUL extension that modifies the "Accept headers" of the HTTP requests to not allow "image/webp" content-type, like the addon posted above by fiction is doing.


EDIT : You don't need any script or extension to change the "accept header", you can change it "about:config" : "image.http.accept"

EDIT2 : Doesn't seems to solve the problem on sister site as the host doesn't serve png/jpg alternatives to webp images...

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

I think you take things a little too much... I don't have the word here, but it's a little over-thinking, considering the humble goal of my message... I didn't want to be outrageous in any way, nor pretend anything, I just detailed a situation to see if any solution could emerge from this friendly and respectful discussion...

If ever there is absolutely no solution that could avoid me to quit using my actual browser, no need to worry or to start a flame war of any sort, it is just a friendly exchange, and at the same time, I learn some new and interesting things that I didn't knew the existence before!

@jarredou: it's exactly my goal for now, I will try to integrate the Mozilla script inside my old FF, for now I know the name of the file I have to mod: all.js. Or, like you say, i'll try to make an external XUL extension, taking other classic extensions as a model...

EDIT: Saw your edit, yes, @jarredou, the only practical solution I see for now, is to find a way (an extension, or a MOD) to integrate the google codec into the browser. Thank you so much!

Thanks, Everyone!

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2022

There are some webp decoders written in javascript, like this one : http://libwebpjs.hohenlimburg.org/v0.6.0/ (tried it with FF53, and webp can be displayed), this should not be that hard to use it in a userscript/extension and decode webp images on the fly after page is loaded.

 

Hey, this script is really working well! thank you so much to have taken the time to search for it!
EDIT: Found the Github page, really interesting!