[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

[Jacob Mather]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Jacob Mather <jmather at itsmajax.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 3:26 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:12 PM, Jacob Mather <jmather at itsmajax.com> wrote:
>>>> Maybe this is the better question:
>>>>
>>>> Why does the pre-loader matter so much?
>>>
>>> Because it lets pages load faster.
>>>
>>
>> Sure, but s that enough to make for a massive pile of junk-work to do
>> whenever a site is redesigned?
>>
>> Could this not be better addressed through better/faster css
>> processing? There would still be more of a delay, but I'm just trying
>> to say that the trade-offs could be more than worth it.
>
> There are limits to what you can do, unfortunately.  No matter how
> fast your CSS parsing is, your CSS file should be external, which
> means you have to make a request for the CSS file, wait for it to
> finish, *then* parse the CSS and figure out what images to request.
> That indirection is necessary for good, maintainable design, but it's
> murder for page load speed.
>
> This is an unresolvable conflict right now, given the design of HTTP.
> SPDY can help us fix this - the server can proactively start pushing
> resources at the client that it knows will be needed for the page,
> instead of waiting for the client to realize that it's needed and make
> a request.  SPDY is developing nicely (and I think is becoming HTTP
> 2.0?), so this'll happen in the future, but for now we still have a
> tradeoff.
>
> ~TJ

I get that. I understand the delays and such involved. I'm just making
sure it's critically looked at.

At the end of the day, my CMS handles images internally, so I can just
update how the image template prints out the display and I'm good to
go on an update. I'm just trying to look at others who won't have it
as easy.

Consider WordPress Guy who has all of this code embedded, and has to
go back and update every post in order to change.

Consider Left Bar Girl who actually sets the same image on two
different break points (i.e. big image, small image, and then big
image again) because after she un-floats the left bar, the larger
image is the best fit again.

Perhaps that's a use case to put up on the wiki, the whole left bar deal.

Why not adopt a better standard that is forward looking to SPDY?