[whatwg] Defaulting new image solution to 192dpi

My suggestion is that the srcset (or <picture>) should assume that images  
are "2x" scale by default.


My reasoning behind is:

- we have <img> for easy embedding of 1x images today, but we don't have  
2x <img> for the future. Having to specify width/height in <img> all the  
time is annoying.

- highdpi displays will become dominant at some point, it's only a matter  
of time (they pretty much are already in high-end smartphones, and are  
going to appear in laptops next). Bandwidth is also going to be less of a  
concern, so it'll be rational and desirable to serve images for the 2x  
resolution only (and just rely on 96dpi displays scaling them down).

Necessity to specify 2x scaling all the time will become a bad default and  
a historical quirk (like the DOCTYPE), and a source of annoyance where  
accidentally omitted "2x" syntax makes images large and pixelated.


So to future-proof the solution I think:

<img src="1x.jpg" srcset="2x.jpg">

should be equivalent to:

<img src="1x.jpg" srcset="2x.jpg 2x">


and I expect that it'll eventually be commonly used this way:

<img srcset="2x.jpg">

when people stop caring about bandwidth overhead for "low-end" displays.


The srcset still allows 1x scale to be specified, so this change doesn't  
take any functionality away.

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesiński

Received on Thursday, 17 May 2012 11:30:46 UTC