[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

Wed May 16 12:19:41 PDT 2012

On 16 May 2012 20:12, Jacob Mather <jmather at itsmajax.com> wrote:
> Maybe this is the better question:
>
> Why does the pre-loader matter so much?
>
> Basing the selected image off of browser width is inherently
> backwards. The content should be informed by the layout, not by the
> browser.
>

I do agree with you (it's all about layout rather than screen width -
it's the layout that dictates the content images and it's the screen
width that dictates the layout - there's a clear stack of dependancies
and at the moment that isn't reflected in the technology we use).
However I think the problem right now is that at the time the browser
see's the <img /> it is likely to not know the layout. The CSS hasn't
loaded yet and the layout hasn't been applied - so the image can't
know how big it needs to be. This is why I put forward the idea of
setting breakpoints in the <head> as a <meta> tag. That is the one and
only place that other technologies can be sure will have already been
loaded.