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Next in Browser Development, High DPI Websites?
Joost de Valk writes "In a post at the WebKit blog, Dave Hyatt raises interesting points about the future of web development and browsers. He says, that with screens getting more and more pixels, it is imperative website design takes the next step: High DPI Website rendering. This could mean that a CSS pixel (px) is rendered as a 2x2 pixelblock. In the article he also mentions WebKit will be providing possibilities to use SVG for all kinds of purposes, like backgrounds. He calls upon other browser developers to take part in the discussion so that 'concrete standards in this area can be hammered out.'"
The headline says "high DPI"... if each pixel was rendered as a 2x2 block, wouldn't that make it a lower DPI? Correct me if I'm wrong...
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Nobody's forcing you to look at a website in high DPI, they're just enabling you to do so.
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
This is going to be a nightmare for web developers like me. Not only will I have to test my website in Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7, Opera 6, 7, 8, Firefox 1, 1.5, 2, Konquerer/Safari, Netscape, etc... but also test in the SAME browsers on monitors with a high resolution to make sure the High DPI rendering doesn't mess up navigation.
This is just a bad idea. Not only is this not going through the W3C as it should to be standardized, but many sites do pixel positioning to have ultimate control over their design. This could throw that out of wack (it looks like this only affects CSS and not pictures/spacers some developers use). Also, I can guarentee you if this is standardized, it'll be like Microsoft's Alpha-Transparent PNG support... it'll come... eventually...
I think maybe we should wait until the current standards are, erm, standard.
Even today I have to tweak valid code to make all the browsers see it the same.
Get the basics right first, like float, tranparency, opacity etc then add to it with whatever is needed.
Common sense is not so common
An eagle-eyed developer may enjoy being able to have many open windows crammed into the same amount of space, but many of us would like our apps to remain more or less the same size and don't want to have to squint to read text.
... that is vector graphics as a BACKUP image to be used IF and only IF the user has configured their browser to "zoom" the websites for higher DPI. That way fonts look good and larger images look good too, yet they won't be sending huge GIF's and JPEGS, or even compressed PNGs, instead you'll get a nice smooth 30k image that looks beautiful no matter what your resolution.
That part is talking about YOU.
The full solution to this problem therefore is to allow your user interface to scale, with the scale factor being configurable by the user. This means that Web content has to be zoomable, with the entire page properly scaling based off the magnification chosen by the user.
This part is talking about ME. People with high DPI and not so great vision would like to be able to scale pages. If you RTFM you'd see that it's optional and he's suggested SVG
Sounds damn good to me!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
There should be more focus on developing websites to be compatible with smaller screens than desktop monitors. How many times have people tried to view some useful website on their PDA or cellphone or other small screened device, only to have it practically unusable due to formatting issues with such a small screen real estate. There is a far higher need for small screen compatability than large screens due to the fact that a bigger screen does not screw up formatting, and therefore is not an issue for the user.
Scaling is the right approach, but it's the user (*not* the developer) who should be in control. No one else has any right (or even ability) to set pixel sizes on my display. Am I 320x200 or 1920x1440? 3" handheld or 27" plasma? How far from the monitor am I? How many arcseconds per pixel? How good is my eyesight? What colors and contrast levels do I prefer? What font faces am I most comfortable with? If you don't know for absolute sure, then stay the hell out of my settings.
Any page that says "designed for resolution X" is done by a hack. Current web designs scale ok if you stay away from absolute units. Scaling images properly is a royal pain in the ass. But turning browsers into pixel-perfect rendering devices (even by translating CSS pixels into real pixels) is not the answer. Pixel units should be abolished from the CSS spec (along with points, picas, inches, and cm). Everything should be done with em/ex. Just adding rounded corners to CSS would make a lot of image scaling problems disappear. SVG can pick up the slack.
The web is an information exchange conduit, not a graphic design medium.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Lots of web designers fuck up. It's an issue.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
same here... on my cell phone.
Ever since the seperation of style and content via CSS, the web has been moving much faster towards the goal of being equally well rendered in every medium. This is why you should measure fonts in ems rather than pixels, and measure other elements in percentages or ems. That way, your site will look just as good on a projector as it will on a mobile phone. With a move to liquid layouts and SVG, and a lack of references to pixels, the devices the webpage will be rendered on should become completely irrelevant to web developers.
Consider a Web page that is designed for an 800×600 resolution.
Okay, this is your first mistake. When you design a web site for a particular resolution you're guaranteed that it will display undesirably on more than 50% of your visitors' screens. Even if my screen is exactly your projected size there is a very good chance I'll be annoyed by having to resize my browser.
In fact, if I have to make my browser window any other size than the one I've set it to in order for your web site to be useful then you've already pissed me off. I'm the customer. You don't want to piss me off.
Its not like this wasn't understood from the first days of NCSA Mosaic nearly 15 years ago. That's why the original specs for html intentionally offered no way to specify pixel placement.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Graphics could likewise be scaled.
Yes, they can--but scaled graphics will never look as good as higher-resolution source graphics. The entire point of what he's talking about is enabling web developers to have pages with images that look fantastic when scaled up, rather than looking like a page with small images that have been automatically scaled by the OS/browser.