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Responsive Images 101, Part 2: Img Required

By Jason Grigsby

Published on March 17th, 2015

Topics

One of the main reasons why we need solutions for responsive images is because the <img> element is insufficient. It only has one src and we need multiple sources.

Given that fact, it may be surprising that we’re going to start by talking about the <img> element instead of the new, shiny toys like <picture> and srcset.

No matter what responsive images solution you use, <img> is required.

The <img> element is critical for all of the inline responsive images solutions. The way I like to think about it is that the img is a box into which all of the responsive image rules are added and applied.1

img-required

You can use JavaScript to watch for changes in the currentSrc of the img element. Here is an incredibly simple script that watches for changes and writes them to the page2:

(function() {
  var currentSrc, oldSrc, imgEl;
  var showPicSrc = function() {
    oldSrc     = currentSrc;
    imgEl      = document.getElementById('picimg');
    currentSrc = imgEl.currentSrc || imgEl.src;

    if (typeof oldSrc === 'undefined' || oldSrc !== currentSrc) {
      document.getElementById('logger').innerHTML = currentSrc;
    }
  };

  // You may wish to debounce resize if you have performance concerns
  window.addEventListener('resize', showPicSrc);
  window.addEventListener('load', showPicSrc);
})(window);     
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

You can see this in action on this demo page3. Resize the browser to see the currentsrc change.

The fact that the <img> will always show the current source means that any existing JavaScript that interacts with the <img> element will continue to work as expected.

(Not to mention the decades worth of code that browser-makers have written to handle images correctly.)

As Eric Portis puts it, “we’re progressively enhancing the img” when we use the new responsive images standards.

There are some scenarios where the img element alone might be enough:

  • A fixed width, single density web page — If you don’t have a responsive design and aren’t worrying about “retina” displays, then the img element is all you need.

  • Small differences in file size — For some images there isn’t much difference between the file size of the largest and smallest variants. We’ve seen this with badges, icons and other small images that don’t change much as the viewport changes. If there isn’t much difference in file size, a single img source may suffice.

  • Using vector-based images like SVG — If you’re using a vector-based image format like SVG, the image can scale without providing multiple sources. In that case, you may be able to link directly to the SVG as the single source for the img.

    This depends, of course, on whether the browsers you support also support SVG. You may be better off using the picture element to provide alternative image formats as fallbacks—something I’ll cover later in this series.

If you want to support high-density displays, then we need to supersize our <img> element. Learn how in Part 3 in this series: Srcset Display Density.

  1. Definitions
  2. Currently Viewing:Img Required
  3. Srcset Display Density
  4. Srcset Width Descriptors
  5. Sizes
  6. Picture Element
  7. Type
  8. CSS Responsive Images
  9. Image breakpoints
  10. Conclusion

  1. Box icon made by Daniel Bruce from www.flaticon.com and is licensed under CC BY 3.0
  2. Thanks to Lyza and Erik for helping with the JavaScript.
  3. Demo page forked from Google Chrome Team picture element example that was used in Pearl Chen‘s great article on Built-in Browser Support for Responsive Images.

Comments

Mike Donahue said:

The debounce events are repeated at the end?

It would be helpful to see the image markup. I looked at the demo and see that the picture element is used to pull this off but there’s no mention of that here.

Would you need add the script for every responsive image on the page? It’s using getElementById and in theory we should only use an ID once per page. How does this handle multiple images per page?

Liking the series so far. Thank you.

Jason Grigsby (Article Author ) said:

Ah crap. Copy and paste error at the end of that code snippet. The repeat shouldn’t be there.

The code isn’t meant for real use. It is only meant to demonstrate that the image source is actually what is impacted by srcset, sizes, type, media, and source.

The image markup is on the demo page itself which is linked to from the article, but I’ve had people miss the links to my demos in the past. I’ve got to pull them out of the body copy in the future.

Anyways, the demo is at:
http://cloudfour.com/examples/img-currentsrc/

alexander farkas said:

In your JS example you are using the resize to get the currentSrc. The currentSrc is only changed after the image is downloaded. While the resize is triggering this change, you will get async problems with slow networks here.

The right event to use is the img.onload event (With this you don’t even have to check wehter something has changed).