Re: On use cases, was Re: WebP, anyone using it?

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 3:11 PM, Brett Jankord wrote:
> I would encourage us not to think of a use case depending on if there is enough WebP usage to support us considering a type attribute, but rather think of the bigger picture of this use case. 
> 
> Do developers have a native HTML way to load an image file and fall back to a supported file if the first file is not supported? If not, how often to devs try to hack together solutions to use image formats besides .jpg, .png, or .gif?
With all due respect, I don't think this is the right question: the question should be "are developers trying to load alternative image formats in any significant number? If they are, what are the demonstrable advantages of the alternative format?" 
> 
> I think as "retina" displays start to become more and more common, we will see a greater need for image formats that either are vector based like .svg or are highly compressed like .webp. Though there will also be a need to keep support for older browsers that do not support these image formats.

Again, this is speculation. We need to avoid speculation because we could start speculating about anything (e.g., "but in the future, all displays will be 3D"). This is a dangerous path to go down and leads to failure. We need to only address the cases that we are trying to solve today. 

To date, no one here has stood up and said "I'm using [new alternative formats] in production, I have x number of users".

> Hixie mentioned that there is already the object element which does this, but the object element leaves a lot to be desired. For example, displaying an .svg in with object element with a nested .jpg img fall-back inside, both images are downloaded by the user, creating unnecessary overhead. 
> 
> Another issue with the object tag is lack of a context menu on right click. I know Chrome supports the context-menu while Firefox does not. This makes saving images / sharing images an issue without this support. 
> 
> To me, these are issues the picture element could solve. 
Or object could be fixed. It's about costs/benefits. 

-- 
Marcos Caceres

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 14:40:48 UTC