Re: CfC: to publish "The srcset attribute" specification as a First Public Working Draft (FPWD)

On Feb 5, at 3:36 PM, Nathanael D. Jones wrote:

> I think many people were expecting a solution based on element size. 

I would be interested in seeing data to support this assertion.

> While that may not be a use-case you've aimed to solve, I think it should be the *primary* use-case, as it provides a simple solution to nearly every other use-case documented. 
> 
> Here's my full proposal:
> 
> https://gist.github.com/nathanaeljones/4706093


Where your goal is to selectively load images based on the size of the containing element and you’re comfortable delaying the requests for those assets until after the layout has been painted, the functionality you’re looking for could be easily accomplished using JavaScript and data attributes.

In terms of the above as a native solution: your proposal involves heavily modifying the syntax of media queries (with syntactical overlap between your proposal and the existing method of specifying media types), repurposing `width` and `height` attributes, and delaying image requests to well beyond the initial parsing of the markup (waiting until CSS and JS is requested, transferred, and rendered to begin requesting image sources). As a first step, I might recommend reaching out to browser representatives to determine the implementation viability of your proposal—there are several members of the RICG that would likely be willing to offer you feedback.

I understand that this is a subject to which a great deal of people have given thought. I’m happy to continue this discussion on the RICG mailing list, but I’m sure you can understand where we won’t be withdrawing the `picture` proposal based on proposals that haven’t yet been thoroughly vetted or discussed at any length. The HTML WG Administrative list doesn’t seem like the appropriate venue for those discussions.

Thanks,
Mat Marquis


> For the record: 
> 
> I do not believe the advantages of slightly-earlier prefetching outweigh the benefits of a CSS-based approach. There are many possible optimizations available to ensure the delay can be reduced to ~40ms for a cache miss (Probably ~15ms with SPDY), and it is simply not worth the markup complexity required. 
> 
> Best regards,
> Nathanael Jones
> 
> 
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