AVIF Image Support

AVIF is a new image format offering significant compression gains over other formats like JPEG and WebP. AVIF, short for AV1 Image File Format, is an advanced and highly efficient image format developed for the web. It is based on the AV1 video codec, which is famous for its superior compression efficiency. AVIF is specially created to store images and visual content in a way that significantly reduces file sizes without compromising image quality.

🔌 Enable the Feature

To enable this feature, navigate to WP Dashboard > Optimole.

1: Open the Settings tab.

2: Expand the Advanced accordion and open the Compression panel.

3: Use the toggle to enable the AVIF Image Support.

🚀 User Site and Image Impact

Using AVIF images on a website can have an important impact, mainly in terms of speed, user experience, and bandwidth usage. AVIF images are highly compressed without significant loss of quality. This means they are much smaller in size compared to other image formats like JPEG or PNG. While the exact savings will depend on the content, encoding settings, and quality target, you can see up to 50% savings vs. JPEG. Smaller image files lead to faster loading times for web pages, especially on slower internet connections or mobile devices.

While most modern browsers support AVIF, it's essential to implement fallback mechanisms for older browsers that do not support this format. This ensures that all users, regardless of their browser choice, have a seamless experience by receiving alternative image formats.

AVIF vs WEBP: if you were to decrease the quality of AVIF, equal to WebP slightly, then the file size of AVIF becomes significantly smaller. With the same look, AVIF is 30% smaller. There is an automatic fallback to WEBP for browsers that lack AVIF support. You can find more details about its support at - https://caniuse.com/avif.

🔄 Benefits and Trade-offs

Benefits

Better User Experience - smaller AVIF images ensure that the website appears almost instantly.
Reduced image file sizes - leading to faster loading times.
Reduced data transfer - benefits users with limited bandwidth, making your site accessible to a wider audience.

Trade-offs

Browser compatibility - while major modern browsers support AVIF, older versions might not display these images correctly.

One important thing to note is that this feature is somehow related to the Best Format feature, which automatically detects what is the most suitable image format and converts images. To make sure all your images have the AVIF format, you must toggle off the Best Format option.

Automatic Best Image Format Selection - doc

🗂Useful Resources

You may find useful these guides:

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Enable the Feature	User Site and Image Impact
Related Settings	Benefits and Trade-offs
Useful Resources