Mat Marquis, chair of the W3C Responsive Images Community Group, sits down with Zeldman to discuss guidelines for responsive images in multi-device design. The two web designers discuss the history, theory, and multi-leveled challenge of responsive images, the path to standardization, and what browsers will do next.

The goal of a “responsive images” solution is to deliver images optimized for the end user’s context, rather than serving the largest potentially necessary image to everyone. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been quite so simple in practice as it is in theory.