Fullsize : Building On The Good Ol’ Web

There’s a great little pitch at www.addfullsize.com :

Fullsize is an attempt to get a new <IMG> attribute called fullsize into the next version of HTML. Hopefully this site will get the attention of the W3C, and they will add fullsize to HTML and make it a standard.

In essence, it’s trying to cut through all the libraries, tools, frameworks and technical hoops you have to jump through and propose a really simple way to create full size views of images. The creator (Drew Wilson) even created a JQuery plugin the drive the point home. It’s a very slick useful little tool.

What bugs me about ideas like that is that their path to true adoption is at the mercy of the W3C (HTML 5 anyone?) and worse, the cabal of web browser providers. I’ve written in the past about how the new wave of dynamic, AJAX-y Web stuff is great and all but it left a massive population of enablers behind. Tools like Fullsize are brave attempts to invite the masses back into the fold.

What we need is a way to flip a switch and enable simple, easy-to-use additions like Fullsize with very little additional work. How about a way to get this stuff out there without waiting seven years for the W3C or Internet Explorer 9?

I may have to bug the mad scientists at the Arc90 lab for this one…