Suggestions for generating web-optimized images

I am sure I've posted about this before, but I've decided to put it in detail in a dear xara, so here goes..

The default 'optimized' images served by xara are not very optimized for web image purposes and this aspect does not seem to have improved for many years.

When serving images online, exif data and other optional data etc. is mostly redundant and so can confidently be stripped in most cases. Plus there are open-sourced tools available that can further optimize images with no loss of quality (or configurable minimal loss of quality as a possible option). Using xara homepage as an example, Google page speed insights reports around 33% saving could be made on many image files there.

Although I have 'manually' optimized xara generated sites myself, it would be a real boon to xara to have the option to generate fully optimized images, all xara sites would get an instant speed/seo boost as a result. (Google now includes page speed in its ranking algorithm). Of course the option could be given (either by site or by individual image) not to optimize images.

Frustrating for me is that optimizations I make can get overwritten on the next publish. Another frustration is that slideshow images are served from xara cdn, so it is more complex to try and optimize those!

One step further would be to also serve webp versions of images which typically save another 10-20% size saving on typical jpeg / png image files. This is slightly more involved as it requires additional page code to detect the browser capability to accept webp images and fall back to jpeg / PNG if unsupported. The majority of browsers now support webp so this would certainly be a worthwhile option to have. One small negative is that extra versions of images would be generated and would require more storage but for most people this would not be an issue, and as long as this was a configurable option.

There are other things that would also help;
Options to:-
Aggregate CSS / javascript
Defer javascript
Ensure all CSS / javascript minimized

There are further things I could add, but some are server dependent so I would not expect xara to get involved with those

I fully endorse your suggestions but from past Xara responses to anything in the dear Xara Forum, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Xara has to work to a minimal viable solution OR if it's working, thee can't be anything wrong.

By munging web and DTP together in the one application, optimising for one might be at the detriment to the other.
WebP is available on Chrome and Opera but Xara would have to check it the asking browser could support WebP making web generation more complex (for Xara); there are plugins for the major browsers and their more recent versions.
Xara has always been fire and forget over its includes. To get deferred JS and aggregation would be a miracle.

CDN has its place. I use CloudFlare so I get Page Speed improvements by the backdoor.

Acorn

Yeah I agree. There are too many orphaned features that need to be revisited and updated. Personally, I would be more enthusiastic and grateful for just a complete updating of current features and tools as opposed to features that I may or may not ever use. Probably just me though.

Quote:

---

Probably just me though

---

No, the majority of TG members Gary.

Great ideas, sculptex. I'd love to see Xara implement webP image optimization. Doesn't seem like it would take a lot to add a global conversion feature from open source libs. Does it make sense NOT to support Google protocols at this point?