Re: What do we do with picture?

On 18.10.2013, at 17:33, Welch Canavan <welch.canavan@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the picture element. I've been working on the new National Geographic Magazine web app (where you can imagine the photographs are pretty important) where we found <picture> to be the hands down best solution for what we need. We're pretty close to launching with a polyfilled <picture> element—I can't imagine we're the only ones.

While I am in favor of the picture element and while I can say you definitely are not the only ones using a picture-polyfill, I must say this is why you use a prollyfill here (it's not an polyfill to be exactly as nothing is standardized yet). This is also why Mat and Scott are recommending the span/div usage with data-attributes over the usage of the real picture-element in websites currently.
If possible please try to stick to the span convention to be safe here.

> <pictures>'s verbosity doesn't concern me as there are already elegant solutions to deal with it and it is much more extensible and future friendly.

True and not true. A CMS will easily cover the verbosity but still the verbosity is there in the source code.
It's only covered. I don't mind personally as it's much easier to read than the not-so-verbose srcset/src-{N} solutions.

> While I understand people's exhaustion it seems like a real shame to settle because we lost a war of attrition.

:/ Kinda agree here although the src-N solution is not claimed as such…

-Anselm | @helloanselm | helloanselm.com

> On October 18, 2013 at 10:48:35 AM, Aaron Gustafson (aaron@easy-designs.net) wrote:
> 
>> On Friday, October 18, 2013 at 5:53 AM, Kornel Lesiński wrote:
>>> Sorry, my mail somehow got truncated. Hopefully will work this time:
>>> 
>>> That's my thought too. I'm just tired by the stalemate we've got.
>>> 
>>> I think srcN is good enough and support it since that's better than
>>> debating forever, but really I'd prefer <picture>.
>>> 
>>> It's just a shame that we'll have a hack baked into the platform forever
>>> just because browser vendors want an easier option now :(
>>> 
>>> "src2" looks like an API failure comparable to Win32's CreateWindowEx, and
>>> adds to the mess HTML already is.
>>> 
>>> <picture> has easier to understand syntax, better extensibility (I'm scared
>>> to think how srcN microsyntax will look like if we need to add couple more
>>> attributes in there), and finally fixes accessibility mistakes <img> made.
>>> 
>>> Right now no solution is implemented yet, so <picture> can still be *the*
>>> solution merely if a couple of browser vendors chooses to impement it first.
>> 
>> 
>> Well put!
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Aaron 
>>