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.'"

Comments

I agree...something fundamentally wrong with this.

[Joce640k]

To make this work you need more dots per inch on the monitor, not just "higher resolution". Current "high resolution" screens are bigger, not more densely pixelled.

Without changing the dot pitch 2x rendering would make the ducument twice as wide, and that's going to make things worse, not better.

FWIW, I currently see no industry interest in higher pixel density screens, in fact I see the total opposite. Most 19" screens on the market have the same number of pixels as 17" screens. This maybe good for filling a gamer's field of view but documents are much less readable on a 19" LCD than on a 17" one. The only big change which might happen in the near future is that 19" monitors catch up with 17" ones in terms of pixel density.

It'll reach a point where you can't

[Sycraft-fu]

Let's say you have one of the ultra high rez wquxga monitors that's 3840x2400 in 24" (those are real by the way). At a size developed for normal monitors, you wouldn't be able to see anything. One pixel is just not visible with the naked eye. It's the kind of dsiplay you can literally hold a magnifying glass to to get more detail.

However I think they are wrong in that web standards need to deal with this. What should deal with it, and what will allegedly deal with it, is OSes. As OSes gain hardware acceleration of their desktops, real resolution independance becomes easy to achieve. You know the rez of the monitor and its' size (monitors report how large they are). Then you just need the user to specify zoom level. At 100%, a 12 point font is rendered as 12 points, at 50%, it's rendered as 6 points. Graphics could likewise be scaled.

Vista is allegedly supposed to be able to do this, though I'm not sure it'll actually make it in for release. Either way, I suspect it's something comming for all OSes sooner rather than later.