[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Tim Kadlec wrote:
> >
> > That's actually exactly why it's better _not_ to plan for it. We can't 
> > design features for problems we don't understand. It's better to wait 
> > until we have real problems before fixing them.
> 
> You may not be able to predict every future problem, but surely you need 
> to keep it in mind as you create solutions for today, right?

Sure, that's why for example the srcset="" syntax is extensible and 
already supports arbitrary densities, not just 1x and 2x.


> For example, if all it takes is one higher resolution or one more 
> feature to come along before a solution becomes unwieldy doesn't that 
> imply the solution isn't a particularly strong one and is instead merely 
> a stopgap?

Only if we think that 3x is more likely to occur than not. It would be 
easy to support everything we could think of, even the unlikely things, 
but the cost would be that instead of a strong solution we'd have an 
unusable one.

In the world of perpetual progress, every solution is "stopgap". That 
doesn't mean they're not strong solutions in the meantime.


> We can't be too bold with our predictions, but we do have to build with 
> the future in mind or else condemn ourselves to a perpetual game of 
> catch-up.

Standardisation is the process of taking innovative ideas and describing 
them in an interoperably implementable way. Standardisation is by 
definition a perpetual game of catch-up.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'