Walking and Talking

## IE walks the walk

[Internet Explorer is implementing `srcset` with `x` 
descriptors](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/12/08/status-roadmap-update-srcset-lt-main-gt-element-and-date-inputs-in-development.aspx).

This is *huge* news; it means that `x` descriptors have or will soon 
come to [every major browser](http://caniuse.com/#feat=srcset).

`w` descriptors, `sizes`, `picture`, and all of the rest are still 
officially “under consideration” (and not “in development”), but 
[from the looks of 
it](https://twitter.com/gregwhitworth/status/542075784014204929) this 
represents a firmly planted first step on the path towards a full 
respimg implementation in IE.

(And it certainly doesn’t hurt the RICG’s unofficial [1% in 2014 
campaign](https://twitter.com/zcorpan/status/542048849641340931).)


## RICG members talk at talks

[Here’s](http://www.ami.ca/AMI-tv/Pages/AMI-Inside.aspx) a video recap 
of [Dave Newton’s September 
talk](https://speakerdeck.com/newtron/using-responsive-images-responsibly-performance-and-accessibility) 
at Accessibility Camp Toronto. Respimg discussions start at the eight 
minute mark; Newtron takes center stage from 9:22–16:50. The talk and 
the interview are great, and hey! Nice shirt!

And apparently Yoav brought the house down at [SmashingConf Whistler 
this past week](http://smashingconf.com/speakers/yoav-weiss). 
“Responsive images are <del>coming</del> here!” Yoav’s slides are 
[here](http://yoavweiss.github.io/smashingconf_whistler/#/).


## Etcetera

I was pleasantly surprised by the comments on my recent [A List Apart 
respimg 
article](http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-images-in-practice). 
I’d braced myself for a lot of criticism and complaint, but almost 
every comment concerned *implementing* and *automating* all of this new 
markup. Myriad dev environments and CMSes are going to require myriad 
tutorials and implementation recaps; Aaron Gustafson has written a great 
one about his recent experiences [implementing respimg with 
ExpressionEngine](http://aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/2014/adaptive-images-in-expressionengine-with-ce-image/) 
on the [Nichols College site](http://www.nichols.edu/).

Ian Devlin did some walking *and* talking this week, on the subject of 
[providing multiple, alternate captions for art-directed 
images](http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2014/12/html5/defining-multiple-captions-and-alt-text-for-responsive-images). 
Personally I’m a bit ambivalent about this, but Ian’s article (and [ 
polyfill](https://github.com/iandevlin/picturecaption)!) make a strong 
case.

Finally, element query talk is still rumbling along. [Minutes from a 
recent RICG conference 
call](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NlJslYLNkmm42EYAXSiA94PIq7t4Bo7EiUA6t2tj7ps/mobilebasic?pli=1) 
indicate that there is some consensus within the group on how to deal 
with the feature’s inherent [circular dependency 
issues](http://www.xanthir.com/b4VG0), and that Tab is getting ready to 
start a syntax discussion thread on 
[www-style](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/). That should 
be fun.


See you in a couple of weeks!

—eric