[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

[Mathew Marquis]

On Oct 11, 2012, at 1:10 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, Mathew Marquis wrote:
>> On Oct 11, 2012, at 12:36 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, Markus Ernst wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> IMHO as an author, the "bandwidth" use case is not solved in a future 
>>>> proof manner
>>> 
>>> It's not solved at all. I didn't attempt to solve it. Before we can 
>>> solve it, we need to figure out how to do so, as discussed here 
>>> (search for "bandwidth one"):
>>> 
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012May/0247.html
>> 
>> The RICG has proposed a solution to dealing with the overarching issue 
>> of bandwidth; it’s described in the following post: 
>> http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/2012/06/18/florians-compromise/
>> 
>> In the interest of keeping relevant information on the list, I’ll 
>> repost the relevant section here:
>> 
>> It would assume a great deal if authors were to make this decision for 
>> the users. It would add a point of failure: we would be taking the 
>> bandwidth information afforded us by the browser, and selectively 
>> applying that information. Some of us may do it wrong; some of us may 
>> find ourselves forced to make a decision as to whether we account for 
>> users with limited bandwidth or not. To not account for it would be, in 
>> my opinion, untenable — I’ve expressed that elsewhere, in no 
>> uncertain terms. I feel that bandwidth decisions are best left to the 
>> browser. The decision to download high vs. standard resolution images 
>> should be made by user agents, depending on the bandwidth available — 
>> and further, I believe there should be a user settable preference for 
>> “always use standard resolution images,” “always use high 
>> resolution images,” ”download high resolution as bandwidth 
>> permits,” and so on. This is the responsibility of browser 
>> implementors, and they largely seem to be in agreement on this.
>> 
>> In discussing the final markup pattern, we have to consider the above. 
>> Somewhere, that markup is going to contain a suggestion, rather than an 
>> imperative. srcset affords us that opportunity: a new syntax _designed_ 
>> to be treated as such. I wouldn’t want to introduce that sort of 
>> variance to the media query spec — a syntax long established as a set 
>> of absolutes.
> 
> How does this address the points in the e-mail I cited above?

Where you were stating that you personally had yet to propose a solution to the issue of bandwidth, I thought it might bear mentioning that there has been a fair amount of discussion around the issue. I apologize if I’ve diverged too far from the original topic.