[whatwg] Image resize API proposal

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 1:21 PM, David Levin <levin at google.com> wrote:
> We've discussed the leading alternate proposal optimized canvas (plus js to
> read the exif information) and then get the bits out of canvas, but there
> are several issues with this proposal including
>
> that not all browsers will have an implementation using the gpu that allows
> web sites to use this and not hang the UI

This is a nonissue.  There's no point in speccing one feature to work
around the fact that browsers haven't implemented another -- it makes
more sense to just get the browsers to implement the latter feature,
making the former moot.  Browsers look like they're moving toward GPU
acceleration for everything now, and that has many more benefits, so
we should assume that by the time they'd implement this API, they'll
already be GPU-accelerated.

> that even if it was implemented everywhere, this solution involves readback
> from the GPU which, as Chris mentioned, is generally evil and should be
> avoided at all costs.

This I'm not qualified to comment on, though.  To the best of my
knowledge, GPUs are magical boxes that make things go faster via pixie
dust.  ;)