[whatwg] <img srcset> for responsive bitmapped content images

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 2:44 PM, Edward O'Connor <eoconnor at apple.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure about this one. If a browser doesn't support SVG, I want to
> be able to provide a bitmap fallback regardless of how I included the
> SVG—in both the <img src> or inline <svg> element cases. <img srcset>
> isn't about providing fallback, so this might best be addressed with a
> different feature.

There's already an easy script-free way to support fallback in inline
<svg> -- add an <img> inside some element that SVG ignores.  (I can't
remember which one is recommended, but IIRC there is one that's
suitable.)  A browser that doesn't support <svg> will ignore all the
SVG tags as unrecognized wrappers, and just display the <img>.  A
browser that supports <svg> will ignore the <img>.  There's no good
existing fallback for <img> that I know of.

In practice, any browser that supports srcset will support SVG-in-img,
and in principle vector images can be thought of as infinite-res, so
it seems like it might be a useful feature to tack on.  But this is
the weakest use-case given, I agree, and it might be best not to solve
it.