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
