Responsive Images and Art Direction in Drupal 8

Optimizing images can drastically decrease the page load time because, on average, 60% of a website’s page weight is made up of them. Responsive Web Design has changed how the web is built and that includes images too, because the aim is to deliver the highest quality image supported and nothing more. So today we have new standard elements and attributes to work with images widely supported by browsers (and polyfills for the rest) and Drupal has incorporated them.

In Drupal 8 the Responsive Image module is in core and is prepared to solve a wide range of needs. But, do we really know how and when should we use the different options given? For example, do we know when should we use the "img" tag for responsive images instead of "picture"? Also, as usually happens in Drupal, there are several contributed modules that help us to improve the basic needs or to solve the special ones, like Art Direction.

I’ll start this session with a quick introduction about the different existing solutions for responsive images to be sure we are all at the same page. I’ll explain the difference between viewport sizing and Art Direction and how we are supposed to work with Drupal for each one, including demos. I’ll share tips and contrib modules that can make the developer and the final user lives easier.

When you leave this session you’ll have an idea about the options offered by Drupal and enough knowledge to choose the correct one for your project.