Show HN: Imgix.js, a JavaScript library for responsive imaging

http://www.imgix.com/imgix-js

by zacman85 • 12 years ago

102 32 12 years ago

fimdomeio• 12 years ago

I wonder why are there so many services that work with this kind of business model. while I would be willing to pay for code I can own, I would never invest in something in something where I can't predict it's future.

latch4• 12 years ago

I can't speak specifically about this responsive image feature, but as for imgix's core business, I have mixed feelings.

It's pretty trivial to write on-the-fly image processing using an existing graphics library. And given that the image can be cached and served from disk and a CDN, it can scale incredibly well.

Having said that, the features that they support is impressive, the API is intuitive, the speed is great, and you can stick your own CDN infront of it (or use theirs, which is actually Fastly, I believe). The founder, Chris, is wicked smart...this is really more than just a wrapper around GM.

egonschiele5• 12 years ago

I just had to write an image server for work and found it incredibly hard. What's your on-the-fly image processing setup look like?

michaelmior• 12 years ago

There are at least couple open source projects that handle dynamic image generation on the backend quite nicely. It seems photon is dead, but I found it works quite well and is easy to extend. Thumbor seems quite active although I've never used it myself.

https://github.com/thumbor/thumbor

https://github.com/1000Memories/photon-core

aidanfeldman• 12 years ago

One that I wrote, written in Ruby: http://magickly.afeld.me/ Powers http://mustachify.me :3)

justinph• 12 years ago

This is nice, but it does not put a valid img tag in the document source without javascript execution. That might be fine for things that don't face the public internet, but if you do any type of public publishing, you should care about having markup that describes your content independent of scripts or css.

This is why standard markup-based responsive images (picture and srcset) are such a big deal.

miggi5• 12 years ago

There is nothing stopping you from setting the src tag. But you are just adding another request. Our base service works perfectly with src set and picturefill. This library is for cases where a different result is desired.

sleepyhead2• 12 years ago

Why isn't there an img-tag in the default example? Why are you promoting bad practice by not having images in img-tags? You solved one problem but created a much bigger problem. Bots, screen readers and non-javascript client should see an image, not a div with some attributes.

tantalor• 12 years ago

Title is "for responsive images", not "imaging".

Imaging is completely different!

miggi5• 12 years ago

What is your definition of imaging? Our use of imaging is in reference to imaging in technology. "The production of graphic images from digitally generated data." Our service processes images on our servers and produces new image data with each request when necessary (if not cached already.) The Javascript library is just a way to interface with our infrastructure and generate these requests.

kingzain• 12 years ago

What would the advantage of this be versus using the picture tag with your own image sources hosted on a CDN? (Let's assume picture tag is widely supported for now)

miggi5• 12 years ago

It is possible to easily target thr picture element using imgix's URL API directly. However, with picture you are limited to a set of image sizes and predefined dprs. This library allows the containing element to recieve an image at any size necessary with any DPR multiplier (up to 5, I believe) with the added bonus of conditional image manipulation overrides. In the example, we are baking in textual image information. Other edits like image quality and sharpening or midtone adjustments could be conditionally set as the image crops larger or smaller.

crapiola• 12 years ago

where did they get the yeti image in the demo?

miggi5• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what "yeti" image you are referring to. All images were purchased royalty free images from iStockPhoto.

Show HN: Imgix.js, a JavaScript library for responsive imaging

Related Stories