# scottjehl/picturefill

A responsive image polyfill for <picture>, srcset, sizes, and more

Repository: https://github.com/scottjehl/picturefill
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/picturefill
Homepage: http://scottjehl.github.com/picturefill/
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Archived: true
Last push: 2022-09-06T15:00:20+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5307, "days_push": 1457, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 9796, forks 1040 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:37.211898+00:00)

## What it is
Picturefill is a JavaScript polyfill that adds responsive image support (<picture>, srcset, sizes) to browsers lacking native support. The project is archived and deprecated since native browser support is now widespread.

## Use cases
- support responsive images in legacy browsers
- polyfill the picture element
- add srcset support to old browsers
- serve different images at different screen sizes
- maintain a legacy site needing responsive image fallbacks

## When to choose
- you must support very old browsers (e.g., IE) without native picture/srcset support
- you're maintaining a legacy codebase already using it

## When to avoid
- targeting modern browsers, which all support picture and srcset natively
- starting a new project - the README explicitly says it's no longer needed or recommended

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: ui-components, developer-tools
- domain: frontend, web-development
- platform: browser
- tags: polyfill, responsive-images, picture-element, srcset, deprecated, javascript

## Member repositories
- scottjehl/picturefill (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:37.211898+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:21:00.602855+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/scottjehl/picturefill (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:37.211898+00:00, sha 7a11b14491bd)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/picturefill (fetched 2026-08-29T08:20:58.392756+00:00, sha 150c66b73d18)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.