Re: Feedback on Responsive Images Extension

On Sep 4, 2012, at 6:17 PM, Andy Davies <dajdavies@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 4 September 2012 23:03, Mathew Marquis <mat@matmarquis.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Sep 4, 2012, at 5:46 PM, Anselm Hannemann wrote:
>> 
>> We had this discussion a couple of months ago in the W3C community group. I
>> started it with the same intends as Andrew but after all it we came to the
>> resolution that it's not what picture is thought for.
>> If you define a picture-element you will most likely link to one image. This
>> image crop/color/properties can vary but not the image meaning / content
>> itself. If you want the meaning / content to change, just use a
>> server-technology or JavaScript to properly change the source and alt. But
>> it's no use-case for the picture-element.
>> 
>> 
>> Agreed: this is a case better solved by way of JavaScript or server-side UA
>> detection. If the subject matter cannot be accurately described by a single
>> `alt` attribute ( or additional descriptive markup, as discussed previously
>> ), it is a disparate set of images and not a case I feel we should account
>> for with `picture`.
> 
> I guess my question would be how does someone specify a 'null' image
> then i.e. have an image a certain breakpoints but no image at others.

One could make a case that an image not essential to every browsing context may well be presentational in nature, and should be handled through CSS. Else, in the case of strictly *content* images, that markup should likely be injected/removed or shown/hidden through JavaScript by way of matchMedia — alternately, that markup could be omitted entirely based on server-side device detection.

I wouldn’t want to encourage inherently "null" markup with regards to images any more than I would encourage a solution for serving "null" text — which is to say, the "null" case is best represented by the absence of said markup altogether. A native solution for controlling the *presence* of markup based purely on client capabilities is a larger conversation, and very likely one worth having. I don’t feel this is best solved on an element-by-element basis, however.

> 
> Resorting to JS to fix this seems the 'wrong' way to go to me
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Andy
> 

Received on Tuesday, 4 September 2012 22:40:50 UTC