To the frustration of many developers and end-users, back in 2022 Google deprecated JPEG-XL support in Chrome/Chromium and proceeded to remove the support. That decision was widely slammed and ultimately Google said they may end up reconsidering it. In November there was renewed activity and interest in restoring JPEG-XL within Google's image web browser and as of yesterday the code was merged.
Moreover, JPEG XL includes several features that help transition from the legacy JPEG coding format. Existing
JPEG files can be losslessly transcoded to JPEG XL files, significantly reducing their size (Fig. 1). These can be
reconstructed to the exact same JPEG file, ensuring backward compatibility with legacy applications. Both
transcoding and reconstruction are computationally efficient. Migrating to JPEG XL reduces storage costs
because servers can store a single JPEG XL file to serve both JPEG and JPEG XL clients. This provides a smooth
transition path from legacy JPEG platforms to the modern JPEG XL.
