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Comment by user24 | Hacker News Reader

> the syntax feels awkward, clunky and very specific

Yeah, stuff like "2x 100w" looks a bit like magic numbers[1]

Also there's potential for confusion in 'x' - does it mean X as in a co-ordinate i.e. width, or zoom? I'd rather see something more verbose like this:

    <img src="foo.jpg">
      <set src="foo1.jpg" width="100">
      <set src="foo2.jpg" density="2">
    </img>

Yes it's more wordy to write, but you read code more than you write it so it makes sense to optimise for readability over byte-shaving.

[1] http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/magic-number.html

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We cannot change the way <img> is parsed. See e.g. http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/ for the tree you get with that markup. It's not what you expect.

Fair enough, but that is a technical limitation which is trivial to get around:

    <setsrc>
      <img src="foo.jpg">
      <set src="foo1.jpg" width="100">
      <set src="foo2.jpg" density="2">
    </setsrc>

Always be wary of allowing arguments that hinge on "it's not technically possible" to shut down good ideas.

FTFY

    <imgset>
      <img src="foo.jpg">
      <img src="foo1.jpg" width="100">
      <img src="foo2.jpg" density="2">
    </imgset>

Not a good idea. Browsers that do not support imgset would show all three images using that syntax. A new element name like "<set>" would be ignored by them.

CSS to the rescue

    imgset img{display:none;}
    imgset img:first-child{display:block;}

Same with modern HTML5 tags, modernizer or any other tool would handle that for you.

Not really, what about browsers that don't support first-child? Backwards compatibility is important.

There are certainly other ways to do it, but this particular way won't work. <img> was historically a "void element" in past versions of HTML, and past browsers, so it can never have child elements.

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