Newsletter #018    
24 May 2022
File format inflation

“Why do there have to be so many?” a friend asked me recently.

All she wanted to do was save an image (simple, right?) but she faced a bewildering array of possible file formats: .png, .jpg, .gif, .tiff, .tga, and on and on.

How’s anyone who’s not a file format expert meant to choose?

Here’s my account of what happens when file formats breed: why it happens, who benefits, and who bears the costs.

Since I dived deep into the weeds of the web this time, I’ll make sure to zoom back out to the big picture next time!

Mark

This is an archive of Tangled Web from 2022
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