Hi List, This week's "Links for light reading" contains references to image supplement techniques, in particular, the discussion of the <picture> element and other alternatives to <img src=....>.
One thing that perplexes me somewhat, is the lack of consideration for an already existing technology, ie: progressive-images. Most image formats, including the common web formats (jpg, gif, png), already support progressive image download, but I rarely see it used. The nice thing about progressive images, is that they already solve the limited-bandwidth problem. The nice thing about using progressive images, is that even when a browser doesn't show the partial-image, they will still the final image -> so as method to handle an already-existing-userbase, a simple browser upgrade is all that is needed... without changing any spec whatsoever. And without any javascript shims, even for MSIE6. Interestingly, as part of the browser support, a browser could choose to only download the required partial-image, before choosing to abort the remainder of the download. In fact, using http-pipelining, a browser/server combo could optimise the connection, simply based on the download-rate, ie: fetch all images through the single pipeline, with the server sending only the first block of each image. And by extension, a browser/server-pipeline could even use range requests to indicate which part of the image was not downloaded, on the low-bandwidth connection, once a high-bandwidth connection becomes available (which would also help solve the intermittent bandwidth problem suffered by mobile devices). Relatedly, a browser could choose to optimise it rendering engine so that low-zoom levels, it only renders sufficient pixels to match its screen resolution, to minimise CPU usage. As you zoom in, the browser (possibly having not fetched the high-detail section of an image, could then range-request the next image size), could render the higher resolution image. I am interested to hear what that list thinks about the proposed <picture> element (I not a fan... it attempts to replace existing functionality, with something technically less capable), image replacement techniques using say javascript/php/etc., or just using existing functionality already built in (and already backwards compatible). Note that I had not been able find anything about this anywhere, since the first proposal for the <picture> element... That said, todays' google foo did bring up some links, with this months' date even!. Thoughts? Mathew Robertson ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
