We all know the good ol', tireless <img> element, which has been a long-time go-to for inserting graphics into webpages. Time doesn’t stop, however, and neither do technological advancements. So, let’s get you up to speed with the element’s modern alternative: the <picture> element.
Every image is unique, so are website visitors. In a perfect world, we would adapt images to be "just right" for all users, i.e., perfectly cropped with responsive dimensions, correct encoding settings, and optimal quality in the most suitable format.
See this example of a photo of a cat:
One of the main optimization challenges for website and mobile developers is how to display sufficiently high quality images to their visitors while minimizing the image file size. A smaller image file size can lead to faster load times, reduced bandwidth costs and an improved user experience. The problem is that reducing the file size too much may lead to a lower image quality and could harm visitor satisfaction. Delivering an optimized image with just the right balance between size and quality can be quite tricky.
This is a guest post by Nicolas Hoizey, co-founder of Clever Age and creator of the Jekyll Cloudinary plugin. Nicolas’ plugin leverages Cloudinary’s image storage, optimization, resizing, and delivery infrastructures to automate responsive images in Jekyll-generated static sites. We think it’s the bee’s knees, and invited Nicolas to write a bit about the process and motivation behind it. Without further ado, here’s Nicolas.
Once upon a time, in long forgotten browser versions, getting a video into a website required creating and embedding Flash resources. But these days, all modern browsers support HTML5, including the HTML5 video tag, which means you’ve got a built-in video player that anyone can use.
I'll start by giving it to you straight:
As part of the recent "auto–everything" launch, we introduced two new transformation parameters – dpr_auto and w_auto, which pair the DPR and Width Client Hints with Cloudinary’s existing image resizing and delivery infrastructure, in order to serve up simple, automatic responsive images.
One of the most important things to know about compressing image files is that a smaller file size comes at the cost of a lower image quality. How much lower, and whether low enough to make a difference visually, depends on the image. Compression can be very effective at reducing the size of the image, and besides lowering the costs of storage space and bandwidth, a reduced image size goes a long way to retaining your users’ attention with faster, smaller downloads.
