[thelist] lowsrc in XHTML

[danielEthan]

Hassan Schroeder wrote:

> danielEthan wrote:
>> Does anyone have the foggiest idea why the lowsrc attribute from the
>> image tag in xhtml was removed?
>
> It was never (AFAIK) part of any spec, just a Netscape extension.
>
>> Is there something analogous to this that can be used?
>
> You could certainly fake it with JavaScript -- use a low-res image
> as the SRC attribute, and swap in a high-res replacement later. Not
> good for people with JS turned off, of course :-)
>
> And I can also imagine faking it with server push, but haven't seen
> it done (nor tried myself). Actually, now that you mention it, I've
> got a current project where that might be useful; hmmmm...
>

Hmmm, is right. If you develop something, please post it back. I'd love
to know and have never done any server pushing (that I *know* of).

It *was* a proprietary add-on, and a little googling shows that their
may be some way to do it in XHTML 1.1:

<snip>
With XHTML 1.1, something similar can be achieved with nested <object>
elements, something like:

<object data="trailer.mpeg" type="video/mpeg" height="90" width="160">
  <object data="screen_shot.jpeg" type="image/jpeg"height="90"
width="160">
    <p>
     <a href="trailer.mpeg">Download the trailer</a> or
     <a href="screen_shot.jpeg">look at a screen shot</a>.
    </p>
  </object>
</object>
</snip>

Courtesy of Toby A Inkster, found at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Nov/0137.html

I do wish that they had added in something analogous to lowsrct. I have
used it a lot, and think it's important for getting the gist of the
image before downloading something large. I'm on the fence now whether
to use it and not validate, or just skip it.