Mozilla Firefox joins with Chrome to become another handler for WebP file type on Windows. Latest Firefox 72 nightly registers as WebP handler, so you can make it as default and open and view WebP images directly in the Firefox browser from now onwards.
Like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Chromium-based browsers, Mozilla Firefox also supports WebP image format. Google, which has introduced the image format uses it in its products and services. The modern WebP image format offers lossy and lossless compression and the images are 26% smaller when compared to JPEG and PNG, claims Google.
While Windows Photo viewer and Photos App on Windows 10 still doesn’t support WebP, Paint App supports it. By installing WebP codec made available by Google you can able to view WebP images natively on Windows in Windows Photo Viewer. You can even open WebP images in supported web browsers, Internet Explorer is only the Microsoft browser that doesn’t support the modern image format.
There is an interesting point brought up by a reporter in a bug where he filed the request to “register (Firefox) as WebP Handler”, he said ” Chrome registers as default handler (despite not having the default browser status) for WebP. We support this now. we should add WebP as a supported extension and possibly take ownership of handling it when Firefox is the default”.
Mozilla employee marks it as the good first bug and says it indeed adds value if we offer Firefox as a handler for WebP file type as Windows 10 1903 still not offering default handler for the file type in question. As of today, the bug has been fixed and you can now set Firefox as the default handler for WebP on windows, here is how.
If you’re on Windows 10, visit Settings > Apps > Default Apps, click choose default apps by file type. find .webp and choose “Firefox Nightly” as default handler.
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