21–30 of 35 posts
None of this matters, of course, on the mobile web... one of many reasons the web won on the desktop.
I refer you to any of the 80% of all websites I've ever visited, they look like complete ass on my portrait-oriented monitor, if they even fit.
I think Apple will be forced by market pressure to make the next iPhone with a larger screen (somewhere between 3.7 and 4.0 inches, unlikely to be as much as 4.3 inches), but the same number of pixels, 960x640. Android has a key differentiator with their larger displays, and Apple needs to nullify that advantage. They dont't advertise the specific 326 PPI in their marketing for the iPhone 4's Retina display; even wit…
I don't really understand why that is an advantage. You might prefer one or the other – but an advantage?
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I don't really understand why that is an advantage. You might prefer one or the other – but an advantage?
You can get an Android phone with a small screen. You can't get an iPhone with a large screen.
They would either increase the size or stick to it, not do both at the same time (at least if the UI remains as unflexible as it is).
He's wrong about performance being a possible reason for iOS's fixed screen sizes. Even if they added adaptive layout a la Lion (truly general constraint-based), imagine how much wildly more computation is going into the existing UIKit/CG/CI/OpenGL graphics pipeline, with stellar results?
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It's also much easier on the user (and in turn, easier on the designer to make it easier on the user). Knowing the exact surface area each control will take up, the exact distance between elements as they will appear in the real world, gives the designer that much greater degree of precision in crafting a human-centered UI.
Please elaborate on how it's easier on the user. I agree it's easier on the designer (though I disagree that that's a good enough reason NOT to use a fluid layout in this day and age), but I fail to see how a design that refuses to conform to my monitor size is any easier for me.
Finally, he was talking about designing for a small, fixed set of screen sizes vs designing for a range of screen sizes, so your final point about your monitor size does not apply.
I think Apple will be forced by market pressure to make the next iPhone with a larger screen (somewhere between 3.7 and 4.0 inches, unlikely to be as much as 4.3 inches), but the same number of pixels, 960x640. Android has a key differentiator with their larger displays, and Apple needs to nullify that advantage. They dont't advertise the specific 326 PPI in their marketing for the iPhone 4's Retina display; even wit…
I wouldn't want mine to be bigger and I never heard anyone say they did. Is this a common complaint?
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You can get an Android phone with a small screen. You can't get an iPhone with a large screen.
I don't think it's very likely that Apple will sell two devices with (significantly) different screen sizes and exactly the same UI. They would either increase the size or stick to it, not do both at the same time (at least if the UI remains as unflexible as it is).
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Please elaborate on how it's easier on the user. I agree it's easier on the designer (though I disagree that that's a good enough reason NOT to use a fluid layout in this day and age), but I fail to see how a design that refuses to conform to my monitor size is any easier for me.
He's assuming that the designer has a fixed amount of time to work on the project, so less time spent faffing with pixel alignment means more time getting the design right in the first place. I suppose there is also the hidden assumption that if the designer spends more time on usability, then the design will be easier for the user to use. Though from the hostility in your message, I'd suspect that you might not beli…
(And an infinite amount of time still probably wouldn't be enough to come up with a good interface based on bad requirements.)
He's right! That'll be Amazon with their forthcoming 7-inch color Kindle: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/
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It's also much easier on the user (and in turn, easier on the designer to make it easier on the user). Knowing the exact surface area each control will take up, the exact distance between elements as they will appear in the real world, gives the designer that much greater degree of precision in crafting a human-centered UI.
Why do you need to know the exact distance? If the aspect ratio is fixed, it seems like exact distance is just a function of resolution. But you can define things exactly where you want them stil..