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Aspect Ratios

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Re: Aspect Ratios

#31

Post by mortenjorck »

rgoddard wrote: post #30
kenjackson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

I would think it would be to make sure to control the actual physical distances. You are more concerned that two buttons are 10mm apart then 10px apart. If they become too close physically, then the higher the chance to miss click or other difficulties.

Exactly. UI distances are indeed a function of resolution, but a user's hand is not so scalable.

Re: Aspect Ratios

#32

Post by zmmmmm »

hollerith wrote: post #7

This is a huge tangent, but I cannot resist asking: which of the mobile OSes is best at allowing the user to customize text size? Suppose for example, the user is old enough to need glasses to read small type, but would prefer not to have to put on his glasses to use his smartphone. Let's leave the mobile browser out of this (because it is more complicated) and focus on apps for calendaring, plain-text email, plain-t…

Curiously Android doesn't offer a way to fiddle with it directly but most Android devices have a simple text file that declares the pixel density and simply by modifying it you get larger (or smaller, if you want) fonts and other UI elements. It's a pretty neat feature and baffles me why it isn't given pride of place in the settings somewhere, since developers have to basically account for all different densities anyway.

Re: Aspect Ratios

#33

Post by _frog »

cpr wrote: post #10

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?

Autolayout in Lion does something similar to this, it's quite nice after the springs and struts we were stuck with in previous versions of OS X.

Re: Aspect Ratios

#34

Post by jamesrom »

So I just read this piece.. and I dont know what the point of it was.. Other than to point out that the author made a wrong prediction, and to note that iOS and Android software handle different screen sizes differently.

Seriously, did I miss some insight that wasn't self-evident?

Re: Aspect Ratios

#35

Post by hollerith »

zmmmmm wrote: post #32
hollerith wrote: post #7

This is a huge tangent, but I cannot resist asking: which of the mobile OSes is best at allowing the user to customize text size? Suppose for example, the user is old enough to need glasses to read small type, but would prefer not to have to put on his glasses to use his smartphone. Let's leave the mobile browser out of this (because it is more complicated) and focus on apps for calendaring, plain-text email, plain-t…

Curiously Android doesn't offer a way to fiddle with it directly but most Android devices have a simple text file that declares the pixel density and simply by modifying it you get larger (or smaller, if you want) fonts and other UI elements. It's a pretty neat feature and baffles me why it isn't given pride of place in the settings somewhere, since developers have to basically account for all different densities any…

Thanks! I am willing to modify a text file :)
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