Re: New responsive images proposal

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Brendan Long <self@brendanlong.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is a stupid question, but the use of media queries in the
> src attribute brings up an interesting question: Why don't we just let
> the src attribute be specified by CSS?
>
> <img alt="A cat" src="default-cat.jpeg" class="cat" />
>
> img.cat {
>     @media (max-width: 600px) {
>         src: "smaller-cat.jpeg";
>     }
>     @media (max-width: 400px) {
>         src: "even-smaller-cat.jpeg";
>     }
> }

The spec isn't quite there yet, but this is intended to be handled via
the existing 'content' property, along with a new value that indicates
the given url() should be treated as a replaced element.

But just to be clear, this is in no way a solution to the Responsive
Images problem, as it means that you don't even start loading the
image until CSS is downloaded and parsed, losing multiple seconds on
mobile devices.

~TJ