Around mid 2012 ?Apple launched its first line of MacBook Pro laptops?with retina displays. To most people that did not mean much. With a small market share, only those at the bleeding edge realised that their web-world was about to become both incredibly sharp and intolerably blurry at the same time.
Retina displays ? Apple?s catch-cry for its ultra high definition screens are not revolutionary, but it?s the way they brought them to the masses via a computer screen that was double the resolution of anything else on the market. With twice the pixels in width and height, the end result was a screen with effectively 4 times the pixel detail.
Sounds like gobbledygook and does it really matter? Well unless you are one of the early adopters, it probably won?t affect you? for now that is!
However new technology has a funny way of becoming the norm and before long we?ll all likely be surfing the web on super high-resolution screens as other manufacturers get on board and the viewing landscape changes. Anyone publishing anything online will need to adapt for this increased resolution.
What does it mean to me?
If you are a photographer or someone who enjoys viewing high-quality images? ? the increased resolution means that your photos appear sharper and clearer than ever before. Pixels are practically invisible even with your nose pressed up against the screen. High definition movies pop out of the screen. It makes for amazing clarity.
This applies equally to the written word. Text documents never looked this good! Text is so sharp and clear that when you get used to looking at this screen you will think that your old device was something made back in the dark ages. It is that crisp.
With increased resolution comes increased clarity, meaning poorer quality (read low-resolution) images look a whole lot worse. Images that you once thought were sharp can look soft and fuzzy on a retina display.
And there?s this great big thing called the internet which is brimming full of low-resolution images. Point this new monitor at any typical web-page and your eyes might start to hurt. Images and graphics look out of focus because most all were created for the old 72ppi (pixels per inch) standard whilst your shiny new retina screen is running at 220ppi.
Web developer nightmare
As a designer I am incredibly mindful of quality and precision. Up until now I?ve been designing for the average pixel resolution and the world has been clear and rosy. Enter the retina display and suddenly my crisp world has been turned upside down.
So why don?t we just create higher-res images to suit? Well for starters increasing an image in resolution means increasing its file-size. With the average user having practically zero patience online ? we all want things to appear in a few short seconds ? an increase in file size is going to hit website conversion rates as the average file weight of a web page needs to increase, thus the time to load? and our patience is tested.
I?m happy to wait a few more seconds so that I can experience a better quality image, but the average user probably wont have that patience especially if the vast majority are surfing the web on lower resolution devices that won?t benefit from an increased quality image.
So perhaps websites could show two different types of images -? a low-resolution image for the typical monitor and a higher resolution for retina users.
But this ads another step in a busy web-development schedule and potentially increases costs in web-development as all graphics/images/ logos have to be produced in two different sizes. Maintenance of said website can become painful especially with many businesses using Content Management Systems?and uploading their own images, possibly from non-retina devices that cannot tell the difference.?
What should online publishers do?
Some clever developers are ?modifying web code??to change image quality at either the server level or on the fly at the browser via all manner of code hacks.
Others are introducing apps and plugins such as WordPress?s WP Retina 2x?that perform? image resolution change based on your server environment.
And the majority are probably making a deliberate choice to keep images as they are until the rest of the industry plays catch-up and a new image resolution becomes standard.
When this tipping point will occur is anyone?s guess, but it would be prudent to consider what if any changes are needed to be done to your own website in light of Apple?s push into high-definition web surfing.
References:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078215/apple-macbook-pro-retina-display-2199-available
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/20/towards-retina-web
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-retina-2x/
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