WebKit has made some serious news by finally implementing the srcset attribute. As Chair of the W3C’s Responsive Images Community Group, I’ve been alternately hoping for and dreading this moment for some time now. It turns out to be good news for all involved parties—the users browsing the Web, most of all.

As with all matters pertaining to “responsive images”: it’s complicated, and it can be hard keeping up with the signal in all the noise. Here’s what you need to know.

What Does It Do?

As originally proposed, the srcset attribute allowed developers to specify a list of sources for an image attribute, to be delivered based on the pixel density of the user’s display:

<img src="low-res.jpg" srcset="high-res.jpg 2x">

Not too scary, this markup. In plain English:

“Use low-res.jpg as the source for this img on low-resolution displays, and for any browser that doesn’t understand the srcset attribute. Use high-res.jpg as the source for this img on high-resolution displays in browsers that understand the srcset attribute.”

Things were starting to look scary, for a little while there. Due in part to high resolution devices, the average website is now nearly an entire megabyte of images. Now developers can target users on high-resolution displays with a high-resolution image source. Meanwhile, users on lower pixel density displays won’t be saddled with the bandwidth cost of downloading a massive high-resolution image, without seeing any benefit.

Can’t We Do That With JavaScript?

On the surface, srcset isn’t doing anything special—it chooses an appropriate source from an attribute and swaps the contents of an img tag’s src. Swapping the contents of an attribute is something we’ve been doing with JavaScript since time immemorial. Well, since the 90s, anyway. So, what does this gain us?

We actually attempted this approach on BostonGlobe.com, one of the earlier sites to make use of any sort of “responsive images” solution. Thanks to increasingly aggressive prefetching in several of the major browsers, an image’s src is requested long before we have a chance to apply any custom scripting: we would end up making two requests for every one image we displayed, defeating the entire purpose. I’ve documented some of those efforts elsewhere, so I’ll spare you the gory details here.

Can’t We Do That With CSS?

“Yes” and “No.” We can do this with background images easily enough, using a combination of media queries concerned with pixel density. srcset as implemented by WebKit is very similar to the recent image-set feature they introduced to CSS. image-set allows you to specify a list of background image sources and resolutions and allow the browser to make the decision as to which one is most appropriate—pretty familiar stuff. We didn’t have anything along these lines for non-presentational content images, however, until now.

Using CSS to manage content images is broken by default, in terms of keeping our concerns separate. It’s an approach that may make perfect sense within the scope of a quick demo page, but stands to quickly spiral out of control in a production website. Having our CMS generate scores of stylesheets full of background images would be no picnic, from a developer standpoint. Worse, however, is that it would lead to requests for stylesheets and images that users may not need unless done very, very carefully. Beyond that, it renders our images—no pun intended—inaccessible to users browsing by way of assistive technologies.

The closest thing we’ve found to a CSS-based approach would swap an image’s sources based on values set in HTMLs data attributes, using some proposed CSS trickery, much of which is only theoretical and may never happen. However, it still didn’t account for the the double download of high and low resolution image assets—the same issue we encountered with JavaScript. Even if a technique like Nicolas’ should become available to us, we’ll still face the same problems as many script-based solutions: attempting to work around a wasteful, redundant request.

What Does It Do About Bandwidth?

Regardless of screen density, there are a number of situations where lower resolution images sources may be preferable: a Retina MacBook Pro tethered to a 3G, for example, or an unstable conference WiFi network—both situations we’ve all been in plenty of times.

Beyond simply providing us with a sort of inline shorthand for resolution media queries, srcset accounts for bandwidth as well, in a sense. It’s buried in arcane spec-speak, but one of the really exciting facets of srcset is that it’s defined as a set of suggestions to the browser. The browser can then use environmental heuristics or a user preference to decide that it wants to fetch a lower resolution image despite a high-resolution display: envision a preference in your mobile browser allowing high-res images to only be requested while connected to WiFi, or a manual browser preference allowing you to only request low-resolution images when your connection is shaky.

Ideally, we’d love to send only those images to devices which are specifically resized for each screen resolution. The intention is to save bandwidth and allow the images to download faster on the targeted screen. A common use case for responsive images.

This isn’t a part of WebKit’s early srcset implementation, but it does pave the way for their addition without requiring any changes to our markup. We, developers, can safely use srcset today, and these optimizations may come “for free” in the future.

What Does This Mean For The picture Element?

Here’s where things get interesting.

The version of srcset implemented by WebKit matches the original proposed use of srcset, and the version that the Responsive Images Community Group has been working towards. We can think of this incarnation of srcset as shorthand for the whole slew of media queries concerned with resolution, with one key difference where the browser can choose to override the applicable source based on user preference.

While this implementation matches the original srcset proposal, the current srcset spec attempts to expand the syntax to cover some of the use cases that the picture element fulfills, using a microsyntax that performs some—but nowhere near all—of the functions of media queries.

<img src="fallback.jpg" srcset="small.jpg 640w 1x, small-hd.jpg 640w 2x, large.jpg 1x, large-hd.jpg 2x" alt="…">

In our opinion not ideal, this markup pattern. We’re restricted to the equivalent of max-width media queries, pixels, and an inscrutable microsyntax, all for the sake of duplicating the function of media queries. Fortunately for us, neither Web developers nor browser reps are particularly fond of this overextended syntax—hopefully, it will never see the light of day.

The picture element exists to address these use cases using a more flexible—and familiar—syntax. picture uses media attributes on source elements, similar to the video element. This allows us to target image sources to a combination of factors: viewport height and/or width, in pixels or ems, using either min or max values—just like media queries in our CSS.

<picture>
        <source src="med.jpg" media="(min-width: 40em)" />
        <source src="sm.jpg" />
        <img src="fallback.jpg" alt="" />
    </picture>
    

The picture specification was written with this reduced srcset syntax in mind, so it could be used on picture’s source elements as well as img elements.

<picture>
        <source srcset="med.jpg 1x, med-hd.jpg 2x" media="(min-width: 40em)" /> 
        <source src="sm.jpg 1x, sm-hd.jpg 2x.jpg" />
        <img src="fallback.jpg" alt="" />
    </picture>

In concert, the two markup patterns give us an incredible amount of flexibility over what image sources we serve to users, depending on their context.

So This Is Good News.

Absolutely, it is. While srcset as implemented by WebKit doesn’t address to all the responsive images use cases, it does represent a major step toward a long overdue solution—hopefully the first of many.

Let’s hope that other browsers follow WebKit’s lead in implementing this feature as it was originally proposed, and stay tuned to the Responsive Images Community Group’s homepage and Twitter account to keep tabs on the subject.

I also wrote about the issues with responsive images and the solutions we’ve come up with when working on the BostonGlobe website in the chapter “The Struggles and Solutions In Responsive Web Design” of the upcoming Smashing Book 4. Grab it, you won’t be disappointed.

(vf)

© Mat Marquis for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

We had a wonderful 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute (SSI) 10th Anniversary Celebration. Thank you, all of you, for coming, speaking, participating, sharing, and connecting! Classes will begin soon, but our campuses have plans for you … there is a reception at College Park, a lunch at UMB, and a dinner at UMBC, all coming up within the next two weeks!

At College Park: Annual Networking Reception:

Thursday, August 29, 2013 ● 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Stamp Student Union

Atrium Room 1107

http://www.gradschool.umd.edu/images/uploads/Welcome_Reception_2013flyer.pdf

At UMB: Welcome Back Lunch!

Tuesday, September 3, 2013 ● 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m

SMC Center, Room 203.

(This is the same location as the SSI. Room 203 is down the hall from the ballroom.)

At UMBC: PROMISE Fall Opening Meeting.

Friday, September 6, 2013 ● 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m

Game Room, 2nd Floor of the Commons.

RSVP here: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/18969.

Students from other campuses within the University System of Maryland, e.g., Bowie, Coppin, UMES, and others are invited to attend this event at UMBC. You may also attend the Funding Seminar which will be held the next day: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/18755 (PROMISE Alums, Dr. Patti Ordóñez and Dr. Frances Carter-Johnson, will lead this session. In total, they have been responsible for millions of dollars of funding that have come to participants in their seminar.)

Other things to consider:

1) Dr. James Green wanted to be a speaker for SSI, but he couldn’t come, so he has invited you to attend sessions on entrepreneurship education at College Park! See details here:

http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/promise-ssi-registrants-throughout-the-usm-are-invited-to-entrepreneur-office-hours-august-september-2013/

2) Remember our tips for the Fall semester: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/prepare-for-a-successful-fall-semester-communicate-with-your-faculty-a-message-for-new-and-continuing-grad-students/

3) Please give a hearty thank-you to Miguel Nino, our PROMISE GA who is now at VA Tech: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/congratulations-to-promise-ga-miguel-nino/

We had a wonderful 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute (SSI) 10th Anniversary Celebration. Thank you, all of you, for coming, speaking, participating, sharing, and connecting! Classes will begin soon, but our campuses have plans for you … there is a reception at College Park, a lunch at UMB, and a dinner at UMBC, all coming up within the next two weeks!

At College Park: Annual Networking Reception:

Thursday, August 29, 2013 ● 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Stamp Student Union

Atrium Room 1107

http://www.gradschool.umd.edu/images/uploads/Welcome_Reception_2013flyer.pdf

At UMB: Welcome Back Lunch!

Tuesday, September 3, 2013 ● 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m

SMC Center, Room 203.

(This is the same location as the SSI. Room 203 is down the hall from the ballroom.)

At UMBC: PROMISE Fall Opening Meeting.

Friday, September 6, 2013 ● 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m

Game Room, 2nd Floor of the Commons.

RSVP here: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/18969.

Students from other campuses within the University System of Maryland, e.g., Bowie, Coppin, UMES, and others are invited to attend this event at UMBC. You may also attend the Funding Seminar which will be held the next day: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/18755 (PROMISE Alums, Dr. Patti Ordóñez and Dr. Frances Carter-Johnson, will lead this session. In total, they have been responsible for millions of dollars of funding that have come to participants in their seminar.)

Other things to consider:

1) Dr. James Green wanted to be a speaker for SSI, but he couldn’t come, so he has invited you to attend sessions on entrepreneurship education at College Park! See details here:

http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/promise-ssi-registrants-throughout-the-usm-are-invited-to-entrepreneur-office-hours-august-september-2013/

2) Remember our tips for the Fall semester: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/prepare-for-a-successful-fall-semester-communicate-with-your-faculty-a-message-for-new-and-continuing-grad-students/

3) Please give a hearty thank-you to Miguel Nino, our PROMISE GA who is now at VA Tech: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/congratulations-to-promise-ga-miguel-nino/

Congratulations to Dr. Susan Hoban, Catherine Kruchten, and Alexis O'Malley for their presentation at the National Charter Schools Conference held at the DC Convention Center on July 3, 2013.  Out of hundreds of presenters, their presentation ranked #2 out of the top 10!

The NASA’s BEST (Beginning Engineering, Science and Technology) project provides professional development for educators and curriculum support resources with a space exploration theme and introduces the Engineering Design Process in STEM for elementary and middle school classrooms. 

The following information was shared by Dr. LaTese Briggs (PROMISE Alum, UMBC Chemistry & Biochemistry, Current Program Analyst at Faster Cures.) Dr. Briggs captivated the audience of the 2013 PROMISE SSI on Saturday, August 17, with her call to the audience to have their G.I. Jane/G.I. Joe moments. She called for people to be academically, mentally, and emotionally prepared to step into their moments. Dr. Briggs finished her undergraduate degree at Hood College, her PhD at UMBC, and her Postdoc at the Broad Institute, a collaborative between Harvard and MIT. Dr. Briggs said that she is now in her dream job at an “ACTION” tank.  During the 2013 PROMISE SSI, Dr. Briggs participated in the During her time at UMBC, Dr. Briggs was a Meyerhoff Biomedical Fellow, A Gates Fellow, and a Peer Mentor for PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP. Dr. Briggs voluntarily provided the information below, after receiving inquires following her segment for the 2013 SSI Alumni PROMISE Talks. We thank her for being so giving of her time and expertise. 

• SSI 2013, August 17. 9:00 AM: The PROMISE Talks: PROMISE Alumni Discuss Their Research on Healthcare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Dr. Briggs:

Thank you again for inviting me to participate in the 10^th anniversary of SSI. It is always an honor to be invited to speak at SSI, but it was truly special to participate in such a milestone event.

I have a had  few student reach out to me to inquire about the Broad Institute and I thought that it might be helpful to share my response to them with the larger PROMISE audience. I have pasted some tips and useful links on the subject below.

1.      Well before you are ready to apply (<1 year prior if possible), please be sure to study the website thoroughly to really get a sense of what is happening at the Broad. Start NOW, well before you are ready to move on to your postdoc. Do this by:

a.      Familiarizing yourself with the website

b.      Review the online  Brochures and Annual reports

c.      Review the Program areas at the Broad

2.      Identify  Faculty at the Broad whose research align with your interests and skill sets. When you select these 2-3 people, make certain that you are very familiar with the work (read their papers, understand the larger initiatives that they might be a part of i.e. chemical biology platform, RNAi platform, etc).

a.      Also try to figure out which conferences these faculty members frequent and get yourself there to meet him/her, and of course when you do, position yourself so that you can strike up a conversation. It can be as simple as “I read about your research in X, and I found Y to be very interesting, can you tell me more about this?”

3.      Develop a research proposal that outlines a project that you would like to pursue in that lab and really make sure that it is comprehensive, well thought out, and is both in alignment  and can enrich the work that is already going on in that lab (Note: this is good to do for any postdoc position that you consider, I guarantee you that it will put you a few steps ahead of most candidates).

4.      Read about the Diversity Initiative which houses the Diversity Postdoctoral fellowship program. Be sure to read this page carefully before submitting the required documents to diversity@broadinstitute.org

5.      Keep in mind that you can also reach out to a faculty member directly if you prefer, or if there are no remaining diversity fellowship slots available.

Here are some other links that will help you familiarize with the organization:

Broad Mindset/Approach

Broad Blog

Broad video library

BE THOROUGH! The key to accessing a training opportunity at the Broad is congruency. You need to be both a scientific and cultural fit – meaning that you are motivated and enthusiastic about being creative and highly collaborative.  This is truly a unique organization, so take your time with learning what the Broad is about and really put your best foot forward in the application. The website is dense and there is a lot of “hidden” information, so go through it more than once. If you are selected for an interview, be prepared to give a talk and to  meet at least 10 people during your interview. The process is intense and competitive, but keep in mind that if you believe that you are exceptional, then you are exceptional, and it will reflect as such at all times. Don’t sell yourself short; however, be prepared to perform exceptionally when they tell you YES, you can join us as a Broadie!

LaTese L. Briggs, Ph.D.

FasterCures |A Center of the Milken Institute

Program Analyst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We thank Dr. Briggs for sharing this information!

The following information was shared by Dr. LaTese Briggs (PROMISE Alum, UMBC Chemistry & Biochemistry, Current Program Analyst at Faster Cures.) Dr. Briggs captivated the audience of the 2013 PROMISE SSI on Saturday, August 17, with her call to the audience to have their G.I. Jane/G.I. Joe moments. She called for people to be academically, mentally, and emotionally prepared to step into their moments. Dr. Briggs finished her undergraduate degree at Hood College, her PhD at UMBC, and her Postdoc at the Broad Institute, a collaborative between Harvard and MIT. Dr. Briggs said that she is now in her dream job at an “ACTION” tank.  During the 2013 PROMISE SSI, Dr. Briggs participated in the During her time at UMBC, Dr. Briggs was a Meyerhoff Biomedical Fellow, A Gates Fellow, and a Peer Mentor for PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP. Dr. Briggs voluntarily provided the information below, after receiving inquires following her segment for the 2013 SSI Alumni PROMISE Talks. We thank her for being so giving of her time and expertise. 

• SSI 2013, August 17. 9:00 AM: The PROMISE Talks: PROMISE Alumni Discuss Their Research on Healthcare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Dr. Briggs:

Thank you again for inviting me to participate in the 10^th anniversary of SSI. It is always an honor to be invited to speak at SSI, but it was truly special to participate in such a milestone event.

I have a had  few student reach out to me to inquire about the Broad Institute and I thought that it might be helpful to share my response to them with the larger PROMISE audience. I have pasted some tips and useful links on the subject below.

1.      Well before you are ready to apply (<1 year prior if possible), please be sure to study the website thoroughly to really get a sense of what is happening at the Broad. Start NOW, well before you are ready to move on to your postdoc. Do this by:

a.      Familiarizing yourself with the website

b.      Review the online  Brochures and Annual reports

c.      Review the Program areas at the Broad

2.      Identify  Faculty at the Broad whose research align with your interests and skill sets. When you select these 2-3 people, make certain that you are very familiar with the work (read their papers, understand the larger initiatives that they might be a part of i.e. chemical biology platform, RNAi platform, etc).

a.      Also try to figure out which conferences these faculty members frequent and get yourself there to meet him/her, and of course when you do, position yourself so that you can strike up a conversation. It can be as simple as “I read about your research in X, and I found Y to be very interesting, can you tell me more about this?”

3.      Develop a research proposal that outlines a project that you would like to pursue in that lab and really make sure that it is comprehensive, well thought out, and is both in alignment  and can enrich the work that is already going on in that lab (Note: this is good to do for any postdoc position that you consider, I guarantee you that it will put you a few steps ahead of most candidates).

4.      Read about the Diversity Initiative which houses the Diversity Postdoctoral fellowship program. Be sure to read this page carefully before submitting the required documents to diversity@broadinstitute.org

5.      Keep in mind that you can also reach out to a faculty member directly if you prefer, or if there are no remaining diversity fellowship slots available.

Here are some other links that will help you familiarize with the organization:

Broad Mindset/Approach

Broad Blog

Broad video library

BE THOROUGH! The key to accessing a training opportunity at the Broad is congruency. You need to be both a scientific and cultural fit – meaning that you are motivated and enthusiastic about being creative and highly collaborative.  This is truly a unique organization, so take your time with learning what the Broad is about and really put your best foot forward in the application. The website is dense and there is a lot of “hidden” information, so go through it more than once. If you are selected for an interview, be prepared to give a talk and to  meet at least 10 people during your interview. The process is intense and competitive, but keep in mind that if you believe that you are exceptional, then you are exceptional, and it will reflect as such at all times. Don’t sell yourself short; however, be prepared to perform exceptionally when they tell you YES, you can join us as a Broadie!

LaTese L. Briggs, Ph.D.

FasterCures |A Center of the Milken Institute

Program Analyst

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We thank Dr. Briggs for sharing this information!

Welcome BACK!

All intramural leagues and events for the upcoming fall semester have been posted to imleagues.com, be sure to check them out and sign up! More information about all the events will be posted later as well as any additional leagues, tournaments or changes will be posted later. I am looking forward to a great semester with lots of activities.