We’re Just Getting Started

I’m filling in for Eric this week; he earned himself a little writing break after his recent A List Apart article, Responsive Images in Practice (http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-images-in-practice) . I wrote a little something (http://alistapart.com/blog/post/why-responsive-images-matter) on the subject myself, but it was just gilding the lily—Eric’s article is easily one of my favorites on the topic of responsive images. If you haven’t checked it out yet, there’s no time like the present.


** Aw, You Guys
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One of my favorite things about the RICG has been seeing others spreading the word about everything we’re accomplishing together; Eric with his articles and these newsletters, Jason Grigsby talking about responsive images at next years’ An Event Apart (http://aneventapart.com/event/atlanta-2015) , and the countless people blogging and tweeting and… Pinteresting or whatever it is people are into these days, talking about responsive images—why all of this matters, and helping each other make use of it all. There was a time—not all that long ago, really—when I’d have to brace myself before clicking on my saved search for "responsive images" (https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=responsive%20images&src=typd) . Now it’s full of people sharing the way they’re working responsive images into their projects, supporting each other with documentation, and rallying around a shared desire to build smaller, faster websites for the users of the web.

I’m not a sentimental guy or anything, but y’know. It sure as hell is nice to see.

What. That’s dust in my eyes.

_Dust_.


** Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends
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It’s also highly encouraging to see all of this as we launch into our next undertaking as the Responsive Issues Community Group (http://ricg.io) : element queries. We’re following the rough path we carved out with responsive images: starting with a Use Cases and Requirements (https://responsiveimagescg.github.io/eq-usecases/) document and kicking off some good ol’ fashioned syntax bikeshedding (https://etherpad.mozilla.org/el-queries) .

Following in the footsteps of the Etherpad that launched a thousand emails (https://etherpad.mozilla.org/responsive-assets) , we’re opening the floodgates on the topic of element query syntaxes and you’re all invited. Now, the goal is not to decide on THE FINAL SYNTAX—we’re not going into this fighting for one particular way of doing things, the way we ended up doing with picture. The goal is just to start hashing this stuff out; see what makes sense, and whether we’re all leaning a certain way syntax-wise. Even if we’re not sorting out the exact arrangement of characters that an element query might use, we can start looking for patterns in the way we’re all thinking about this stuff.

So: propose a syntax, make some notes, write down a potential problem with this whole effort or a syntax you know you don’t want. Any thoughts you contribute here are gonna help things along.


** Meanwhile…
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Moving on to element queries doesn’t mean moving away from responsive images, by any stretch of the imagination. We’ve got serious work responsive images underway with the WordPress team, with Tim Evko (https://twitter.com/tevko) leading the charge.

The first phase is the seamless integration of srcset and sizes—everything from the markup to the differently-sized image sources themselves handled by the CMS, completely behind the scenes. Uploaders have no extra work to do and users see no difference apart from a faster website.

From there it isn’t hard to imagine picture working the same way, down the road, but with all the cropping and art-directing (http://usecases.responsiveimages.org/#art-direction) handled through an image editor built right into WordPress. But, one thing at a time.

Well, a few things at a time.

Received on Friday, 14 November 2014 21:40:14 UTC