The Tyranny Of Web Standards

http://www.kendoui.com/blogs/teamblog/posts/12-05-24/responsive_images_and_the_tyranny_of_web_standards.aspx

by burke_holland • 14 years ago

25 14 14 years ago

toddanglin• 14 years ago

Good quote from the blog: "The truth is this: web standards are often a tyranny to developers and designers alike. By themselves, they constrain just as much as they free, and they are designed not for our benefit, but primarily for the benefit of platforms and software on which our solutions run."

Very true.

codgercoder• 14 years ago

However bad instances turn out, we should view the standards process the way Churchill viewed democracy: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

burke_holland• 14 years ago

Standards are a necessary tax, just like process. If everyone could just get in a room and do the right thing, we wouldn't have any issues. Any time you throw a governing body at anything, you are going to have a certain amount of inefficiency.

kibwen• 14 years ago

Was afraid this was going to be one of those "damn it why doesn't everyone just use webkit already?!??!" posts, and was happily surprised. The points are good and well-reasoned.

There are problems with the web standards process, to be sure. But in my mind, the most interesting part of the whole affair is that developers get any input whatsoever. I don't recall MS ever asking for input on the Windows API, nor Apple on Cocoa (if I'm wrong, links are appreciated). We're helping to build a major platform here, in real time. That's really neat!

jcampbell12• 14 years ago

I just learned about this, but srcset seems better than <picture> for backwards compatibility reasons.

To make images on the ipad3 look great, all we have to do is change:

to:

That is a ton cleaner than dealing with <picture> which completely breaks most browsers.

bsatrom4• 14 years ago

I agree that srcset has its advantages, and like I said in the post, I expect that it will make a fine solution in the long-run, and I'm glad this problem is being addressed.

One minor point, however, is that the strawman <picture> proposal was meant to be equally backward compatible through the use of a child <img> tag that would only display in unsupported browsers, as <video> works today:

  <source src=hires.png media="max-width:1920px">
  <source src=midres.png media="min-width:800px">
  <source src=lores.png>

  <!-- fallback for browsers without support -->
  <img src=midres.png alt="cool-image">

</picture>

jcampbell12• 14 years ago

That is not nearly as backwards compatible because you are adding markup. Will the picture element inherit it's style from the inner img element? I don't think so. Now you have to go mess around with the CSS and have two different pathways for the style to be applied based on the browser.

Also, <video> fallback doesn't really work. If you have an h264 video, there is no good way to make it play in all browsers with markup alone (Firefox won't fallback to flash).

tptacek3• 14 years ago

Which of the major browser vendors among Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft supported <picture>? And by "support", I merely mean "vocal support on any mailing list or standards document"; I don't mean "actually took the time to implement".

Update: 45 minutes later, top comment, no replies; is the answer "none of the major browser vendors vocally supported <picture>"?

bsatrom4• 14 years ago

sorry for the delay. As far as I am aware, none of the browsers expressed vocal and specific support for <picture>. In fact, as I understand it, a few had reservations about the element, but these were not expressed to the members of the Responsive Images Community Group either.

tptacek3• 14 years ago

So when we say "developers", we mean "web content developers", and when we say things like "the expectation is that WHATWG (or whatever) will prioritize the needs of developers over everything else", we're saying "we expect the browser vendors to take dictation from the content developers"? And we think that's reasonable?

The Tyranny Of Web Standards

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