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Using AVIF as a background image

September 11, 2020

Well, you probably already heard that AVIF has landed. If not, click on the link and read. But there is a problem with all these new file formats. Despite their support by the element, when you want to use it as a background image — you don't have a way to tell which URL is for which browser.

When I was working a lot on the image optimizations, I was using a simple script that checks if the browser can render a specific type of image and sets the corresponding class to the element. The script is available on my GitHub: https://github.com/leechy/imgsupport

And today I have added support for the AVIF files. And updated the usage instructions like this:

/* Browser supports AVIF */ 
.avif .myelem {
background-image: url('myimage.avif');
}

/* Browser does not support AVIF, but supports WebP */
.webp.notavif .myelem {
background-image: url('myimage.webp');
}

/* Browser does not support AVIF nor WebP and gets JPEG */
.notavif.notwebp .myelem {
background-image: url('myimage.jpg');
}

So go and grab the script and use AVIF everywhere you need.

Andrey “Leechy” Lechev

Some frontender thoughts
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