Firefox improves web page loading by by cutting the size of .JPEGs by 10%

Ever tried loading websites full of selfies and filtered food images on a shabby connection? If your answer is yes, then you know it always leads to tears and frustration. Good thing Mozilla’s got your back — the non-profit behind Firefox just announced a project called mozjpeg, which aims to shrink JPEG file sizes for faster-loading web pages. To get the ball rolling, the group made a fork of an existing JPEG codec and threw in a feature that crunches photos without affecting quality.

JPEG, the decades-old image format, shows no signs of disappearing. That’s why Mozilla announced a project Wednesday to try to shave another 10 percent off images compressed with the standard. The non-profit organization behind Firefoxannounced a project called mozjpeg that aims to compress JPEGs more intelligently. Smaller file sizes means Web pages load faster, and Mozilla is deeply interested in improving the Web’s performance. “Photos can easily make up the bulk of the network traffic for a page load,” said senior technology strategist Josh Aas in a blog post. “Reducing the size of these files is an obvious goal for optimization.”