Eventful

# Eventful

What a month. Personally, I went to Germany to speak (!) at SmashingConf 
(!!!). Never did I think an interest in respimg would take me to a 
medieval hall, half a world away, to tell hundreds of people how to do 
their jobs. But! It did! And I drank bier and ate würst and met heroes 
and made friends. It was as wonderful as it was surreal.

And I actually had a newsletter all written in the Frankfurt Flughafen, 
ready to fire off as soon as I got home, but by the time I got there the 
RICG had won a pair of [Net Awards][1], necessitating a re-write.

- [Best Collaborative Project][2]
- [Best New Web Technology][3]

Feels good, man. To the links!

[1]: https://thenetawards.com
[2]: https://twitter.com/yoavweiss/status/644982406211063808
[3]: https://twitter.com/yoavweiss/status/644984378045673472

## Edge implements `picture`

That was quick. Edge version 10547 [supports `picture` and `sizes`][4].

This means that (with a single, hopefully-soon-remedied [exception][5]) 
every current version of every desktop browser now supports the full 
suite of responsive image features.

Oh, and the Edge team will [probably][6] implement `image-set()`, too!

[4]: https://dev.modern.ie/platform/changelog/desktop/10547/
[5]: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116963
[6]: https://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/cssimageset/


## Core Competency

The energy (and consistency!) behind the respimg-in-WordPress team is a 
joy to behold.

They [released a new version of the official plugin last week][7], 
which, among other things, brings respimg support to images published 
before the plugin was installed, using output filters. This is one more 
step towards the larger goal: [bringing respimg functionality to 
WordPress core][8].

A very large website (anybody know who?) deployed `x` descriptors this 
month and [doubled the current level of usage overnight][9]: `x` 
descriptors are now used on ~1% of Chrome pageviews. That’s a very big 
deal, but `w`s hitting WP-Core might an order-of-magnitude bigger.

[7]: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ricg-responsive-images/changelog/
[8]: 
https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/05/responsive-images-feature-plugin-update/
[9]: 
https://www.chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity/523

## Terriffic Tutorials

Mat, Yoav, and the good people at Akamai collaborated on a pair of 
whiteboard-style respimg [tutorial][10] [videos][11]. They’re 
fast-paced and accessible; the visual metaphors surprise and delight. 
Watch!

Jake Archibald had a respimg “[epiphany][12]” recently — “I’m 
writing it all down before I forget everything.” His post conveys a a 
ton of information extremely economically, and it’s somehow personable 
and digestible, too. Everything that you need to know about the syntax 
in a pretty-short blog post. Read!

Finally — my interest in Client Hints still far outpaces my expertise, 
so I learned a lot from [this article][13] by Mr. Client Hints himself, 
Ilya Grigorik. Automate!

[10]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJLl6MSHDr4
[11]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwgQ0LGRnR8
[12]: https://jakearchibald.com/2015/anatomy-of-responsive-images/
[13]: 
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/09/automating-resource-selection-with-client-hints

## Grab Bag

- Picturefill 3 should be out of beta [imminently][14].
- Spec changes afoot: [the `width` attribute is now used as a 
fallback][16] for invalidly-omitted `sizes`, and the meaning of the 
Client Hints `Width` header [just changed from CSS to device 
pixels][17]. Someday I shall catalog the many definitions of the 
extremly-overloaded word “width” w/r/t respimg...
- Understanding and communicating how an adaptable image will adapt 
within a responsive design is hard. Kevin Mack and Tim Vonderloh gave [a 
presentation][15] at the Columbus Web Group explaining how they apply 
the concepts and language of print (where variability comes from 
imperfect processeses) to respimg (where the variability happens *by 
design*).
- Last and maybe actually least, Facebook blogged about their [cover 
photo optimization efforts][18]. The post doesn’t mention respimg, 
per-se, but it does contain a lot of insight into how Facebook actually 
goes about making, managing, and delivering images efficiently at 
Facebook-scale.

[14]: https://twitter.com/respimg/status/641311961171533824
[15]: https://twitter.com/nicetransition/status/637345391910916096
[16]: https://github.com/ResponsiveImagesCG/picture-element/issues/268
[17]: https://twitter.com/yoavweiss/status/647005135017758720
[18]: 
https://code.facebook.com/posts/991252547593574/the-technology-behind-preview-photos/

Tschüs!

—eric