Responsive images are finally coming over the W3C's official HTML5 specification. Mathew Marquis, chair of the W3C Community Group "Responsive Images" has some news for all of us…

After months of waiting, discussion, problems, restrictions we now have an official statement by Mathew Marquis:

Paul Cotton, one of the HTML WG Chairs, has arranged for me to work with several members of the HTMLWG on a final draft of the picture specification, as we discussed at the HTML WG weekly teleconference on July 26th.

picture is tentatively slated for inclusion under the HTML5 umbrella, rather than being pushed to HTML.next. The status of the proposal can be tracked via the W3C Bugtracker. I’ll be working with Adrian Bateman and Frank Oliver from Microsoft on a formal specification in the coming weeks, and will have an update on our progress by August 16th on bugtracker.

Laura Carlson has also been working to gather feedback from the HTML WG Accessibility Task Force on the proposed markup, in addition to being tremendously helpful in navigating the standards process. Welcome to the RICG, Laura!

This finally means we will have an official W3C powered specification for reponsive images and so we hopefully will get support by browser vendors soon. I am very excited that Microsoft shows its interest on that specification as they are a major browser vendor and additionally one of the both who provide prefetching and preparsing in their browsers which will be a problem with responsive images.

Stay tuned to get more updates about responsive images.