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Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

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Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#51

Post by Groxx »

jentulman wrote: post #36
archgrove wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would need an extra HTTP request, yes. In practice for the PNG solution, one would be better off with sending the DPI in the request headers, so that the "correct" image is the only one sent. For JPEG 2000, the network characteristics are important, but I don't think it would be too bad on a mobile network. Low DPI devices might get a bit "too much", but it wouldn't be a problem - they can just throw it out (or in…

Headers do seem the best place for a non vendor specific standard to be set. I'd love to see something like viewport-dpi - the dpi viewport-max - the maximum possible pixel dimension and possibly viewport-current - the pixel dimensions at the time of the request Decent responsive design should deal with the differing viewport sizes, but it might be nice to get a hint before delivering your page what direction to weig…

What do you do when using a projector, and your DPI is something like 3? (serious question, I don't know how this is traditionally handled)

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#52

Post by chris_wot »

smackfu wrote: post #43

Wow, the background on that page takes forever to fill in on my iPhone 4. Like over a minute. And the whole Mobile Safari hangs for 30 seconds or so if I switch orientation, I think because it has to resize the massive background image to the changing screen width and the processor isn't up to it. So I would be cautious of using this technique with huge images.

Agreed! Potentially, you could be causing greater data charges/slower loading just because you have an iPad 3... Anyone know if there's a setting to turn these image loads off on an iPad 3?

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#53

Post by twoodfin »

ajross wrote: post #47
rimantas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing silly no gimmicky about it. It is just a catchy name for some technology. There are a lot of similar marketing terms in tech. Lots more people will understand what you are talking about when you say "retina display" instead of "high-DPI display". What's high-DPI? What's high-DPI when talking about pentile displays? Not to mention that "retina" is easier to pronounce. Apple loves simpler names for a r…

No, it's a gimmick designed expressly to confuse the consumer. Other manufacturers of comparable products, for trademark reasons, can't use the term "retina". So only Apple has "retina". Intel played a similar trick about 8 years ago with "Centrino". The advertising (for what was essentially just a 802.11b chipset with some added processor/chipset requirements) was so successful that many novice users got fooled into…

> many novice users got fooled into thinking that "Centrino" was wifi, and that all those other manufacturers were just cheap knockoffs of an Intel technology. It did great harm to the market.

Really? Both the claim that many users were "fooled" by the Centrino branding and that this hurt the market for Wi-Fi devices seem highly implausible to me. I don't think I heard anyone use the term "Centrino" outside of Intel PR and reporting thereupon, whereas Wi-Fi had made it into the vernacular at least a decade ago.

The only other trademark for the 802.11 series of standards that got any traction at all was Apple's AirPort, and even their OS calls it Wi-Fi now.

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#54

Post by ajross »

twoodfin wrote: post #53
ajross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a gimmick designed expressly to confuse the consumer. Other manufacturers of comparable products, for trademark reasons, can't use the term "retina". So only Apple has "retina". Intel played a similar trick about 8 years ago with "Centrino". The advertising (for what was essentially just a 802.11b chipset with some added processor/chipset requirements) was so successful that many novice users got fooled into…

> many novice users got fooled into thinking that "Centrino" was wifi, and that all those other manufacturers were just cheap knockoffs of an Intel technology. It did great harm to the market. Really? Both the claim that many users were "fooled" by the Centrino branding and that this hurt the market for Wi-Fi devices seem highly implausible to me. I don't think I heard anyone use the term "Centrino" outside of Intel…

Yes, really. I had to explain to numerous relatives the distinction between "Centrino" and "Wifi". How old are you? Were you engaged with people who were actively buying laptops at the time? Were you engaged on the subject outside the tech community? The Centrino television ads were pervasive, everyone knew what they were about, and no one at the time had ever heard of a laptop that could get on the internet without a wire.

(edit: your remark about AirPort makes this clearer on reflection: you were a mac user at the time, and familiar with Apple products much more than PCs. Outside the mac world, as you might expect, literally no one had heard of an "AirPort". So you were insulated from Intel's nonsense, essentially.)

It's the same thing here. We have "retina.js" being pushed around as a solution for what is clearly a manufacturer-independent problem. Yet on it's face it appears to be Apple-only software. You don't think that constitutes harm to the market?

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#55

Post by WiseWeasel »

archgrove wrote: post #23

As high DPI displays become more common, it seems like the time has come for more advanced file formats (or just using the more advanced features of existing formats). For example, PNG already has an interlacing mode that progressively adds detail to the image ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam7_algorithm ). It could easily be co-opted such that a normal image contains 6 layers of detail, with an additional "retina…

Sounds complicated. I think we just need to do something similar to HTML5 'video' tags for the 'image' tag, where you simply put a list of file paths in the tag, and the browser selects the best one to request, only with different resolutions instead of different file encodings. We could have a standard notation like adding "_x2" to the double res image filenames, and the browser selects the appropriate one to load.

Then, we can support current image formats in the way you envision.

Also, anything you have vectorized should be in SVG format, including text in non-web fonts.

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#56

Post by zootsuiter »

josteink wrote: post #2

Can we please stop using the silly Apple marketing gimmick "retina display" yet? It's a high-DPI display. Lots of devices have it. Lets not attempt to pretend there's anything Apple-specific about that.

Even though the term "retina display" may be a gimmick, I think the creator of retina.js specifically designed it with Apple devices, and Apple's developer documentation, in mind (case in point: usage of the @2x modifier).

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#57

Post by Hervetar »

josteink wrote: post #2

Can we please stop using the silly Apple marketing gimmick "retina display" yet? It's a high-DPI display. Lots of devices have it. Lets not attempt to pretend there's anything Apple-specific about that.

Please cut the drama and the whining and get over it.

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#58

Post by caseyohara »

smackfu wrote: post #43

Wow, the background on that page takes forever to fill in on my iPhone 4. Like over a minute. And the whole Mobile Safari hangs for 30 seconds or so if I switch orientation, I think because it has to resize the massive background image to the changing screen width and the processor isn't up to it. So I would be cautious of using this technique with huge images.

Yes, despite being quite small (878kb) the @2x background takes a while to load. We wouldn't recommend having a 2800×1867 retina background on your site, but for the sake of the demo we wanted to do some showing off.

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#59

Post by archgrove »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #55
archgrove wrote: post #23

As high DPI displays become more common, it seems like the time has come for more advanced file formats (or just using the more advanced features of existing formats). For example, PNG already has an interlacing mode that progressively adds detail to the image ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam7_algorithm ). It could easily be co-opted such that a normal image contains 6 layers of detail, with an additional "retina…

Sounds complicated. I think we just need to do something similar to HTML5 'video' tags for the 'image' tag, where you simply put a list of file paths in the tag, and the browser selects the best one to request, only with different resolutions instead of different file encodings. We could have a standard notation like adding "_x2" to the double res image filenames, and the browser selects the appropriate one to load.…

That's fine if a) you're willing to maintain two image sets and, b) the only two resolution images you need are "normal" and "2 x normal". The advantage of a progressive quality system is it scales to arbitrary requirements in a single resource. One file provides 1x, 2x, 3x, 3.14x etc.

Re: Retina.js: Retina graphics for your website

#60

Post by Hervetar »

chris_wot wrote: post #52
smackfu wrote: post #43

Wow, the background on that page takes forever to fill in on my iPhone 4. Like over a minute. And the whole Mobile Safari hangs for 30 seconds or so if I switch orientation, I think because it has to resize the massive background image to the changing screen width and the processor isn't up to it. So I would be cautious of using this technique with huge images.

Agreed! Potentially, you could be causing greater data charges/slower loading just because you have an iPad 3... Anyone know if there's a setting to turn these image loads off on an iPad 3?

No, you just have to assume that PNGs are not used and that JPGs are used instead.

But we have so-called experts trying to lead the way now...

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