Firefox 86: AVIF support enabled by default

[harlan4096]

Mozilla plans to enable support for the AVIF format in Firefox 86 Stable so that AVIF image files will be displayed just like any other supported image format in the web browser.

Mozilla introduced support for the AVIF file format back in May 2020 when it added support for an initial version to Firefox Nightly, the development version of the Firefox web browser.

Firefox Nightly users had to enable the feature manually at the time to get it supported in the Firefox browser.

The AVIF image format, also known as AV1 Image File Format, is based on the AV1 video format. Most modern web browsers support AV1 already and many will support the AVIF format eventually as well, if that is not the case already. Chrome 89 for Android will support the format for example

Many desktop browsers that use Chromium as the base support the AVIF format already; this is the case for Google Chrome and Brave, but not for Microsoft Edge Stable.

AVIF promises to offer better compression efficiency than JPEG, a wider feature set, and could be supported equally on the Web and beyond because it is royalty-free.

Mozilla created a new bug listing on Bugzilla@Mozilla last month in which it outlined the plan to enable AVIF by default. Enabling at this stage means setting the preference image.avif.enabled to TRUE in the Firefox configuration.

Mozilla will do this for the upcoming Firefox Beta and Stable releases. Firefox users may set the preference manually to introduce AVIF support in these versions.

You can load the following AVIF Test in your browser to find out if it supports the AVIF format. If you see "This is an AVIF picture", support is enabled already.

Webmasters may use "if...else" to either display an AVIF image if it is supported or a regular image if that is not the case.

Firefox 86 Stable will be released on February 23, 2021.

Now You: what is your take on AVIF support? Is it the up and coming image format?
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