On 16 May 2012 20:10, James Graham <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 16 May 2012, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > >> First off I know that a number of people say this is not possible. I >> am not wanting to argue this because I don't have the knowledge to >> argue it - but I do want to understand why, and currently I do not. >> Please also remember that I can only see this from an authors >> perspective as I'm ignorant of the mechanics of how these things work >> internally. >> >> The idea is to have something like: >> >> <link media="min-bandwidth:0.5mps" ... /> >> <link media="min-bandwidth:1mps" ... /> >> <link media="min-bandwidth:8mps" ... /> > > > Without going deeper into the specific points, implementation experience > suggests that even implementing a binary low-bandwidth/high bandwidth > detection is extremely difficult; Opera has one coupled to the UI for the > "turbo" feature and it has been somewhat non-trivial to get acceptable > quality. > > In general the problem with trying to measure something like bandwidth is > that it is highly time-variable; it depends on a huge number of > environmental factors like the other users/applications on the same > connection, possible browser features like down-prioritising connections in > background tabs, external environmental features like "the train just went > into a tunnel" or "I just went out of range of WiFi and switched to 3G" and > any number of other things. Some of those are temporary conditions, some are > rapid changes to a new long-term state. Trying to present a single number > representing this complexity in realtime just isn't going to work.
Yeah, that's what I had figured the process I described would be able to work for - but I accept it must be more complicated than I have accounted for. Thanks for the feedback :)
