[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

[Matthew Wilcox]

Chalk me up as another making that mistake. Properties on elements
usually describe a property of the element. Not a property of
something else (like the viewport).

I'm happier than I was about srcset - but why does the spec assume
pixels? Or does it?

Use case: design breakpoints can and often are based on non-pixel
units. em's, for example. As far as I can tell, srcset does not work
with units other than pixels, so how could it work reliably with
designs done in non-pixel units?

-Matt

On 16 May 2012 13:38, PJ McCormick <pj at mynameispj.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 5:25 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Jeremy Keith <jeremy at adactio.com> wrote:
>>> > You're right. I was thinking that the values (Nh Nw Nx) described the
>>> *image* but in fact they describe (in the case of Nh and Nw) the viewport
>>> and (in the case of Nx) the pixel density of the screen/device.
>>> >
>>> > I suspect I won't be the only one to make that mistake.
>>>
>>> Indeed. I made the same mistake initially. The what's currently in the
>>> spec is terribly counter-intuitive in this regard.
>>
>>
> I also made the same mistake, and it took combing through all of
> yesterday's and this morning's discussions on the topic for me to finally
> understand it properly. And I consider myself to be a fairly competent
> developer, not someone just starting out with HTML.
>
> Now that I do understand I'm honestly happier with @srcset as a concept,
> but my problems with the syntax itself still remain. In fact, they might be
> amplified. Surely we can refine this into a better, more easily understood
> syntax.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 5:25 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Jeremy Keith <jeremy at adactio.com> wrote:
>> > You're right. I was thinking that the values (Nh Nw Nx) described the
>> *image* but in fact they describe (in the case of Nh and Nw) the viewport
>> and (in the case of Nx) the pixel density of the screen/device.
>> >
>> > I suspect I won't be the only one to make that mistake.
>>
>> Indeed. I made the same mistake initially. The what's currently in the
>> spec is terribly counter-intuitive in this regard.
>>
>> > I can see now how it does handle the art-direction case as well. I think
>> it's a shame that it's a different syntax to media queries but on the plus
>> side, if it maps directly to imgset in CSS, that's good.
>>
>> It seems to me that Media Queries are appropriate for the
>> art-direction case and factors of the pixel dimensions of the image
>> referred to by src="" are appropriate for the pixel density case.
>>
>> I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to solve these two axes in the
>> same syntax or solution. It seems to me that srcset="" is bad for the
>> art-direction case and <picture> is bad for the pixel density case.
>>
>> (I think the concept of dpi isn't appropriate for either case, FWIW. I
>> think "the number of horizontal and vertical bitmap samples doubled
>> relative to the traditional src image" works much better conceptually
>> for Web authoring than making people do dpi math with an abstract
>> baseline of 96 dpi. Anecdotal observation of trying to get family
>> members to do dpi math for print publications suggests that it's hard
>> to get educated people do dpi math right even when an "inch" is a real
>> inch an not an abstraction.)
>>
>> --
>> Henri Sivonen
>> hsivonen at iki.fi
>> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>>