From all I see shared and developed on this subject I keep asking myself, just how important is a solution?
With all the responsive sites I’ve buit the majority of images tend to be scaled down from 100% to around 40-60% of the original dimensions. Perhaps more for full width hero banners.
If we’re happy with the bandwidth consumption shipping those images at their largest size for the largest viewport, why is it such an issue shipping them for smaller screens? Sure, some unnecessary bytes, but screen size has very little relation to the client’s available bandwidth.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to serve the perfectly optimised image, but I have yet to see an implementation that can get this right.
And as alluring as the idea of responsive images are, we’re evidentially willing to throw logic and bandwidth concerns out the window when it comes to shipping @2x “Retina” images for high-dpi screens on sexy devices.
My point is we’re not in dire need of urgent change. Find a design style that is suitable for the Web and not overly reliant on raster graphics. Yes, we need to continue developing this idea of responsive images. But if it’s not ready yet, the Web isn’t going to explode. Design decisions are always going to play a bigger role.
David Bushell
From all I see shared and developed on this subject I keep asking myself, just how important is a solution?
With all the responsive sites I’ve buit the majority of images tend to be scaled down from 100% to around 40-60% of the original dimensions. Perhaps more for full width hero banners.
If we’re happy with the bandwidth consumption shipping those images at their largest size for the largest viewport, why is it such an issue shipping them for smaller screens? Sure, some unnecessary bytes, but screen size has very little relation to the client’s available bandwidth.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to serve the perfectly optimised image, but I have yet to see an implementation that can get this right.
And as alluring as the idea of responsive images are, we’re evidentially willing to throw logic and bandwidth concerns out the window when it comes to shipping @2x “Retina” images for high-dpi screens on sexy devices.
My point is we’re not in dire need of urgent change. Find a design style that is suitable for the Web and not overly reliant on raster graphics. Yes, we need to continue developing this idea of responsive images. But if it’s not ready yet, the Web isn’t going to explode. Design decisions are always going to play a bigger role.