As someone who didn't know what JPEG XL was before reading this, it sounded to me like some specialized file format for huge images. Ironically, this would lead me to the right choice of file type if I had a large image.
I do admit, though, that if I saw a folder full of .jpeg and .jpegxl files before reading this, I'd expect the .jpegxl ones to be larger on average. Or if someone said "should I send you the .jpeg or the .jpegxl" and I was low on disk space, I'd find it plausible to say "hmm, no reason to send the large version, the jpeg should be fine".
> Or if someone said "should I send you the .jpeg or the .jpegxl" and I was low on disk space, I'd find it plausible to say "hmm, no reason to send the large version, the jpeg should be fine".
eXtremely Late to the party: JPEG was so preoccupied with trying to generate revenue streams that they were totally blindsided by WebP/AVIF which made "generate revenue streams" an explicit non-goal.
I suspect it has to do with the animated geometric background on other non-blog pages of the site, like the homepage, and because the site appears to be a custom Next.js/Tailwind app coded by a college student and not a professional web developer who is used to supporting years-old browsers. (Safari has supported WebGL 2 since 2021.)
I wasn't around when the name for this project was chosen (I only got involved after the call for proposals, at which point the codec already had a name even if it didn't exist yet). I haven't been able to track down the actual etymology or rationale for the name, though "Long-term" has been suggested to be the main interpretation.
I think the name was to some extent chosen as a tongue-in-cheek pun because obviously compression is about making large things smaller. The name must have been chosen around the time that there was a lot of activity around JPEG XS. That codec is all about speed and low complexity, which is where the S comes from: it is very fast (so S for speed) and also it has a relatively simple and small implementation (in terms of circuit complexity), since it is designed for hardware.
So in contrast to JPEG XS, JPEG XL is actually "extra large" in the sense that it does have more complexity, more coding tools, more functionality. All those things are of course there with the goal of making smaller files, but the codec itself is "extra large" compared to JPEG since it has all the coding tools of JPEG plus a bunch more. So in that sense, JPEG XS is indeed "extra small" and JPEG XL is "extra large", as a codec, but in terms of the sizes of the compressed images, it's exactly the other way around: JPEG XS will produce larger files (it sacrifices compression for simplicity/speed/latency), JPEG XL will produce smaller files.
I agree that all this is quite confusing. If it helps, you can always just call it by its filename extension / media type instead of its full name: "jxl".
JXL is a pretty good extension. I'd pronounce it "jixel" to rhyme with pixel.
JPEG-Eon, or JPEG-Era might have given the impression of "long-term"? Jeon is a Korean fritter, which I like the sound of. I don't think you could have Jera without causing a clash with Jira for some vowel pronunciations??
JPEG-NX, JPEG-Next, would have been good, .jnx, "jinx", ...
Or, how about just JPEN, for JPEG-New?
Honestly, if it's also for non-photographic images then a break from even using "JPEG" would be useful in not weighing the format down with that baggage.
I too thought it was likely optimised for very large [photographic] images.
Readit News
I do admit, though, that if I saw a folder full of .jpeg and .jpegxl files before reading this, I'd expect the .jpegxl ones to be larger on average. Or if someone said "should I send you the .jpeg or the .jpegxl" and I was low on disk space, I'd find it plausible to say "hmm, no reason to send the large version, the jpeg should be fine".
This is it, I think it works out just fine in the end.
> Or if someone said "should I send you the .jpeg or the .jpegxl" and I was low on disk space, I'd find it plausible to say "hmm, no reason to send the large version, the jpeg should be fine".
I'm still not clear what it actually stands for after reading OPs post though.
Extra Large it is.
On Safari it fails with a blank page and the title ""Application error: a client-side exception has occurred" = $1"
If you go the main page of the blog, it is the background
https://www.mark-pekala.dev/
I wasn't around when the name for this project was chosen (I only got involved after the call for proposals, at which point the codec already had a name even if it didn't exist yet). I haven't been able to track down the actual etymology or rationale for the name, though "Long-term" has been suggested to be the main interpretation.
I think the name was to some extent chosen as a tongue-in-cheek pun because obviously compression is about making large things smaller. The name must have been chosen around the time that there was a lot of activity around JPEG XS. That codec is all about speed and low complexity, which is where the S comes from: it is very fast (so S for speed) and also it has a relatively simple and small implementation (in terms of circuit complexity), since it is designed for hardware.
So in contrast to JPEG XS, JPEG XL is actually "extra large" in the sense that it does have more complexity, more coding tools, more functionality. All those things are of course there with the goal of making smaller files, but the codec itself is "extra large" compared to JPEG since it has all the coding tools of JPEG plus a bunch more. So in that sense, JPEG XS is indeed "extra small" and JPEG XL is "extra large", as a codec, but in terms of the sizes of the compressed images, it's exactly the other way around: JPEG XS will produce larger files (it sacrifices compression for simplicity/speed/latency), JPEG XL will produce smaller files.
I agree that all this is quite confusing. If it helps, you can always just call it by its filename extension / media type instead of its full name: "jxl".
JPEG-HDR is probably the only one of them that gives away what it might be for.
JPEG-Eon, or JPEG-Era might have given the impression of "long-term"? Jeon is a Korean fritter, which I like the sound of. I don't think you could have Jera without causing a clash with Jira for some vowel pronunciations??
JPEG-NX, JPEG-Next, would have been good, .jnx, "jinx", ...
Or, how about just JPEN, for JPEG-New?
Honestly, if it's also for non-photographic images then a break from even using "JPEG" would be useful in not weighing the format down with that baggage.
I too thought it was likely optimised for very large [photographic] images.
"JPEG XL" allows you to store extra large images in a fraction of the space. It makes sense in my head.