Say Yes to the Press

# Say Yes to the Press

Let’s talk about [WordPress](https://wordpress.org). According to some 
[websites](http://trends.builtwith.com/cms) that I just 
[found](https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage), 
the venerable pile of PHP and MySQL that we call “WordPress” serves 
up *1 in every 5 websites* and runs *more than half* of all websites 
that use a CMS.

So it’s high time that WordPress had proper responsive image support. 
Tim Evko wrote [a fine blog 
post](http://web-design-weekly.com/2015/01/20/ricg-responsive-images-plugin/) 
about the efforts that he, along with our illustrious chair and a few 
members of the WordPress core team, has made to create a drop-in 
responsive images plugin for WordPress. The plugin can be had 
[here](https://wordpress.org/plugins/ricg-responsive-images/) and its 
source lives 
[here](https://github.com/ResponsiveImagesCG/wp-tevko-responsive-images). 
It does the hard work of creating a range of source files from a single 
high-resolution image and marking them up with `srcset` and `sizes`. If 
you want to art-direct your WordPress-hosted images, you’ll need to 
use `picture`; as luck has it, Rory Douglas [wrote a 
thing](http://terrificwebdesign.net/use-case/) about how to do *that* 
last week, too.

## Alternate formats

I love JPEG! [Mozilla likes it 
too](http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2014/mozjpeg-3-0/). The 22-year-old 
format recently received the strangest, highest compliment I have ever 
heard an engineer give when a researcher for the (awesome, exciting, 
in-development) Daala video standard [called it “alien technology from 
the 
future.”](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/daala/update1.shtml)

But, while JPEG was the first image format to dominate the web, it will 
not be the last. New formats are coming; new formats are already here. 
`picture`, `source` and the `type` attribute let us use them now, while 
providing fallbacks for non-supporting browsers.

Jason Grigsby [posted a thing about `picture` and `type`-switching on my 
Butt Four 
blog](http://blog.buttfour.com/when-to-use-picture-for-resolution-switching/) 
this week; Zolton Dulac wrote [a *huge* 
article](http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2015/01/14/using-webp-jpeg2000-jpegxr-apng-now-with-picturefill-and-modernizr/) 
detailing the different formats currently on offer, when you should use 
each, and how to serve them to as many users as possible without 
breaking things for older browsers by using Modernizr and Picturefill. 
Read! Implement!


## Grab bag

A load’o’links:

- Bruce Lawson [wrote a blog 
post](http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2015/why-we-cant-do-real-responsive-images-with-css-or-javascript/) 
in preparation for an upcoming talk in Barcelona (next month at the 
[Awwwards conference](http://conference.awwwards.com)) which answers 
everybody’s first question about responsive images: why a markup 
solutuion? Why not JavaScript or CSS?
- Art direction can be a hard use-case to understand if you value 
content parity. [This post about adapting album art for 
cassettes](http://needmoredesigns.com/blog/early-responsive-design/) 
helped me wrap my mind around it back in the day; I recently stumbled 
across [an exploration into responsive 
logos](http://www.responsivelogos.co.uk/) that hit those same, sweet, 
“art direction is not only valid — it’s vital” notes for me.
- Hey did you know that [caniuse started tracking CSS 
image-set](http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-image-set) a month or two ago? I 
sure didn’t!
- [HTML5Test](https://html5test.com) – the website that tests you how 
well your browser supports HTML5 – [added responsive images feature 
tests last 
week](https://twitter.com/html5test/status/555747154846048256).
- Are you in Oxford, UK? Go see [Yoav talk about responsive images at 
SmashingConf](http://smashingconf.com/schedule#yoav-weiss)!


## Housekeeping

There was [some 
talk](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-01-12#T107999) 
in the RICG chat room the other day about reducing the frequency of 
these newsletters – maybe releasing them once a month instead of once 
every two weeks. We figure we should at least ask you for your opinion 
before making a change, so I set up [a one question 
survey](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1c_pQqkwOhBYe3mD5gBAEXscZDeA2bQyhL_NiW-mYpC4/viewform?usp=send_form) 
which does exactly that. If you have a second, let me know — how often 
do you want these newsletters in your inbox?

See you in a couple of weeks!

—eric