[whatwg] The src-N proposal

[Yoav Weiss]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Kornel Lesiński <kornel at geekhood.net>wrote:

>
> An <img> element will be de-facto required for a while as a fallback, but
> could it be optional eventually? I think that even if browsers implement
> <picture> using <img>, the <img> element itself should be hidden in shadow
> DOM.
>

That would eliminate the need of authors to explicitly specify an <img>,
but it'd create 2 <img> children if they did (which would be needed for
fallback for a long while).


> If we don't explicitly define <picture> as wrapper for <img> then yes,
> we'll need separate test cases for <picture>, but:
>
> - hopefully plenty of cases can be adapted with little more than
> find'n'replace <img src=" with <picture><source src="
> - We don't need to bring all the legacy baggage of <img>, so a bunch of
> tests for Netscape'isms can be deleted.
> - Image element has weird stuff like .complete property that can change
> synchronously. Kill it! With clean slate we can define only minimal,
> quirk-free API that is much easier to deal with.
> - Test cases is something that can be shared between browser vendors, and
> the community can help adapt <img> test cases to <picture>, so we can
> spread the effort.
>
>
Since support for <img> cannot be dropped in the near future (or the far
one, for that matter), that would create a lot of test duplication, which
is a significant cost. Test cost is not only writing them initially (which
as you say, can be a joint effort), but also their maintenance and
run-time. Letting <img> do all the heavy lifting resolves this issue,
without any major downsides. Starting fresh is always cleaner, but the cost
is rather high.