[Feature Request] AVIF Support in the free plugin from WP v6.6

Hi @isaumya,

Thank you for your message.

This functionality works differently in WordPress core. Our plugin automatically converts images to WebP and AVIF formats when uploading images to the Media Library, but also optimizes images that already exist on the website.

The AVIF format has a lot of browser support (but still not 100%), but still not everything supports this format. Let’s also look at email clients and various types of tools/robots that download images from your website. This data is not shown in official statistics, e.g. on the “Can I use” website. In our opinion, using only the AVIF format is risky.

Maybe I’ll tell you how our plugin works? When a browser tries to download an image file, the plugin checks if it supports the AVIF format (if enabled in the plugin settings). If so, the browser will receive the equivalent of the original image in the AVIF format. If it does not support AVIF, but supports the WebP format, the browser will receive the equivalent of the original image in WebP format. In case the browser does not support either WebP or AVIF, the original image is loaded. This means full support for all browsers.

Another issue is the quality of converting images to the AVIF format. Using the Gd or Imagick library, the effects are weaker than using the solutions we use on our remote servers. This means that we can achieve less weight and better quality for AVIF files than PHP libraries.

It is also important that converting images to the AVIF format loads the server much more heavily than converting images to the WebP format. In the case of shared servers, this will be difficult because they may not be able to withstand such a load.

Best,
Mateusz

Hi @mateuszgbiorczyk,
Thanks for your reply. I am fully aware about how the plugin works including the nginx conf rule to check if the browser supports avif/webp then provide that otherwise provide the normal image.

I am also aware that the GD/PHP extension-based compression might not have as amazing quality of your own server-level system. All of these are fine. All I’m saying is that as WP Core now support it, lets do it in the free plugin as best as possible with PHP libraries.

But if a customer needs more optimization, they can always buy the pro version. I’m not asking to remove the pro version. Instead simply asking to generate AVIF like you do for WebP at the server level in the free version (knowing it won’t be as optimized as an external server-based system).

This will ensure that even the free plugin users can somewhat take advantage of AVIF benefits without upgrading to pro (maybe it’s a small site and they don’t want super high-quality optimization, but just normal WebP-like optimization that’s possible at the server level).

In short for free users using libavif and libwebp for server level AVIF & WebP generation.

What do you think?

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by iSaumya.

@isaumya, we will take your suggestion into account, but we cannot promise anything at the moment.

We tested converting images to AVIF format using PHP libraries, but the results are weaker. We do not want to offer something that does not meet our expectations. We care about the highest quality of images.

I completely understand @mateuszgbiorczyk. Just trying to take advantage of the WP 6.6 benefits here for the entire WP community. That’s all. ??

@isaumya I understand you and I thank you for that.

We also care about this, which is why we constantly make sure that the plugin allows for maximum reduction of the weight of images without losing quality, and at the same time is easy to use.