Optimizing for Truth

## Meeting!

RICG members and representatives from the IE, Firefox, and Chrome teams 
met in Redmond last Thursday to talk about where the RICG is and where 
we’re all headed. The meeting was *action-packed*. I’m hoping that 
some of the folks who were in attendance will be able to write up 
recaps, but here are the things that stuck out to me from [the 
minutes](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T116903):

- Microsoft is planning on implementing the [full 
suite](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T116908) 
of respimg features.
- `img` [will be 
getting](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T116931) 
a readable/writeable DPR property, accessible via JavaScript.
- The venerable [respimg use-cases 
doc](http://usecases.responsiveimages.org) will be seeing some new 
[use](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T116958)-[cases](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T117039) 
soon.
- Tab Atkins is preparing a concrete, workable Element Queries spec [to 
submit to The 
Group](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T117125).
- Client hints are a much bigger deal than I’d previously understood 
them to be, and will provide [a general 
architecture](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T117300) 
for 
[intelligently-managed](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T117349), 
[opt-in](http://ircbot.responsiveimages.org/bot/log/respimg/2015-03-05#T117380) 
content negotiation. Yoav’s 
[just-landed](https://codereview.chromium.org/951303003/) implementation 
of the DPR, Content-DPR, and Resource Width hints in Chrome is just the 
first step.
- Yoav and Ilya are also working to implement a bunch of standard ways 
that developers can use `link`/headers to suggest that browsers do work 
head of time: 
[preconnect](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/CM5BaP6uVvE), 
[preload](http://w3c.github.io/preload/), and prefetch/pre-render aka 
[Resource Hints](http://w3c.github.io/resource-hints/).

Phew!

## Gecko issues

Last newsletter, I [jubilantly 
celebrated](http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c988d9ca55d5d09e73a7dc993&id=5efd23c152&e=4db00bcdc4) 
the prefing-on of respimg features in Firefox Nightly, which paved the 
way for the features to be pushed out to millions of Firefox stable 
users in May. Subsequently, it was discovered that the pref-ed on 
implementation 
[failed](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1139554) a 
[boatload](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1017878) of 
[tests](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1139560). A 
freakout ensued, but I’m happy to report a happy ending — original 
Gecko respimg developer John Schoenick was cajoled out of 
Mozilla-retirement for one last job and saved the day, identifying and 
fixing a handful of root parser incompatibilities.

Phew!

## Grab Bag

- Remember the microtasks Yoav was implementing in WebKit last 
newsletter? They’ve  
[landed!](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137496) Action now 
moves to [the async image loading 
issue](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134488).
- Dave Newton published [an all-in-one Grunt respimg 
plugin](https://www.npmjs.com/package/grunt-respimg
) which’ll take an input image and spit out well-optimized, 
multiple-resolution, multiple-format versions of it, ready for inclusion 
in markup. The plugin packages up all of the [exhaustive 
research](https://github.com/nwtn/image-resize-tests) that Dave has been 
doing into ImageMagick settings into a Grunt-based easy button.
- Tim Evko [penned a wonderful 
article](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/02/24/ricg-responsive-images-for-wordpress/
) over on Smashing Magazine which details the hows and whys of the 
Wordpress respimg plugin.
- Bruce Lawson — `picture`’s [fairy 
godmother](http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/notes-on-adaptive-images-yet-again/) 
— gave what appears to have been [an excellent, whimsical, and 
informative respimg 
talk](http://brucelawson.github.io/talks/2015/awwwards/
) at the Awwwards conference in Barcelona.
- Jason Grigsby [went deep on responsive hero 
images](http://blog.cloudfour.com/responsive-hero-images/
) over on the Cloud Four blog, using them as a window into a much large 
discussion about designing with/for constraints in order to deliver 
useful, simple, and thoughtful design *systems* to clients. Choose your 
breakpoints based on where it breaks — this is as true for images and 
art direction as it is for layouts.

See you in a couple of weeks!

—eric