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Pixel Perfect

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Re: Pixel Perfect

#31

Post by evoxed »

msutherl wrote: post #11

I've recently been studying typography and it's been really heartbreaking to realize that what differentiates a good and a bad typeface onscreen is how it well it renders. Plenty of great typefaces are just unusable. Most fonts distort wildly as you step up/down in pixel size. I didn't start in print design, but man is web design primitive in comparison!

I have to admit that rage was starting to burn inside of me until I read your last sentence– that's one of the reasons why I take so few jobs for the web these days. I always thought that web technologies would far surpass what we could do in print (which, as a lead type junkie, sounded pretty amazing) and then I grew up, started dealing with W3C &c;– now here we are, only in the last two years or so getting a reliable (and compliant) way of using more than just Times, Georgia, Helvetica, Arial, &c... It's slow, slow progress but it's great to see that while those issues are hashing themselves out that the pixel problem is practically resolved. (Though I should note that pixels or not, setting a spread to be displayed digitally was never that much of a problem if it didn't have to be displayed in the browser. Sure, some fonts have shitty hinting but the ball is at least in your court.)

Re: Pixel Perfect

#32

Post by nilium »

evoxed wrote: post #21

So, here's a question for those who actually have one of these mega-res displays... how's the terminal? Or any other typically aliased text? Secondly, how well does it work in a dual/2+ boot situation? Obviously other systems have the drivers for such large displays, but without knowing how to scale it... Is there any way to set the hardware to simply enlarge everything x2 in the absence of serious display drivers (f…

re: A terminal: probably fine, albeit small. Running at 2880x1800 without any scaling isn't terrible, but it would quickly drive your eyes to escape your skull. I can't say for sure what would happen under Linux given only a terminal, but I imagine things would be pretty small until you got it using a different resolution than the native resolution.

Terminal emulators are fine, but I assumed you meant the other kind. Terminal emulators look great, as does every text editor I've used (MacVim, vim in a terminal emulator, Sublime Text 2, TextMate 2, Xcode [looks great, but it's unfortunately still a lousy IDE], etc.).

re: Dual boot, also fine in my case, though I only keep Mac OS and Windows 7 installed right now. Windows 7 in particular is an issue, as DPI scaling only affects some programs (so where on Mac OS you'd get pixel-doubled views or text, on Windows you get windows that aren't scaled at all, such as Chrome). If you have dual monitors, Windows is particularly painful, as DPI scaling is system-wide rather than per-screen. I haven't tested Windows 8 and likely won't until after it's been released.

The best route I've found is to simply set the display to 1920x1200 or lower and scale it up on Windows. Windows 7 just doesn't handle high resolution stuff particularly well -- it's not bad, but things just aren't all there. I expect Windows 8 will be better.

I couldn't say what your options are on a desktopless Linux/BSD system, but I would imagine that there's something you could do, even if that something is just using a larger font.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#33

Post by cshesse »

andrewfelix wrote: post #26

One thing that I've noticed as pixel density is increasing, is many 3rd party UI elements aren't increasing in size relative to monitor improvements. I remember using Photoshop on my old LC475 in the 90's and not having to squint and hold the mouse steady to select the tool I wanted. Please tell me someone else has noticed this? Or am I just getting old.

Monitor pixel densities haven't increased that much, they've been limited by having to keep interface elements visible. It's only easy for apple because they just doubled the density in both directions. Any intermediate numbers of pixels would have impacted usability.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#34

Post by nessus42 »

SCdF wrote: post #15

So more pixels is great. Is it really that great? I feel like there are people who look at their devices and people who look at what's displayed on their devices. For me, text is text is text. I'm looking at it, not so I can enjoy how crisp it is (or isn't), but so I can consume those words and get them inside my head. I find (I've played around with high DPI devices) that while they do look nice, the niceness is qui…

> So more pixels is great. Is it really that great?

If it reduces eyestrain, then it is worth every penny!

I don't know if there is any evidence that it does, but it certainly seems likely that sharper text would reduce eyestrain. I certainly can read tiny text on my Retina iPhone much more easily than I could on my previous iPhone.

Otherwise, it's worth it if it gives you enough more joy, and not if it doesn't.

Some people are fine with music played through stock earbuds, and other people find music more enjoyable played through hi-fidelity equipment. Some people prefer the food at McDonalds and some people prefer 3-star Michelin restaurants. Some people think their old SD CRT TV is fine, and other people prefer 1080p HD. The people who like the former things may never understand why other people will pay more for the latter things. YMMV.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#35

Post by cageface »

arrrg wrote: post #25
cageface wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he himself has written on his blog, in exchange for this kind of PR he gets invited to private meetings inside Apple.

Does he? What are you referring to? The Mountain Lion presentation? Apple invited loads of journalists to that, they just also included Gruber there.

http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#36

Post by colmvp »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #27

I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1] That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design. I can't wait until I can read the Economist…

"sans fonts are close to over"

I'm curious as to why you believe this. Some of the most versatile fonts are sans-serif, i.e. Helvetica, Gotham, DIN, Gill Sans, Futura, and Franklin Gothic.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#37

Post by jmitcheson »

It's a shame Google Chrome still doesn't render CSS3 fonts correctly on Windows. The strangest thing about it is that they barely even seem to acknowledge that it's an issue.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8950164/horrible-renderin...

If you've noticed that web fonts look terrible on Windows / Chrome, please star these issues!

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=91899 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=102371

Re: Pixel Perfect

#38

Post by gavanwoolery »

Unfortunately, a laptop is still a laptop. Small keyboard, inferior mouse (or lack thereof), single display, performance constrained by battery life. The performance margins are getting slimmer, but for a little over the price of the high end MacBook Pro (about $3000 with tax), I could build you a 64-core AMD G34 with 64 gigabytes of RAM, that would utterly destroy the Macbook performance-wise. Obviously, to each their own. I don't think the author is protein-folding or raytraycing, so this computer probably suits his needs better. Alternately, I could build a six-screen Beowulf cluster using 6 Nexus 7 tablets for $1200 (Tegra 3 performance is getting close to Core-Duo performance).

Re: Pixel Perfect

#39

Post by bobbles »

jmduke wrote: post #22
msutherl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people make a point of appreciating the small joys of life. Others do not. Much effort and attention is lost on the latter.

I think its disingenuous to imply that because someone doesn't notice or care about the increased PPI of a laptop, they don't appreciate the small joys of life.

ok replace 'the small joys' with 'some small joys' the point is still the same.

It's similar to what John Carmack said when he was testing out the Rift VR Headset with Rage.

He said he was fascinated in just looking at the bricks in the walls and being able to 'look around' objects in the world, which gave him a new appreciation for all of the art assets that are for 99% of people just a blur as they run past shooting monsters.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#40

Post by sbierwagen »

jmduke wrote: post #30
jcampbell1 wrote: post #27

I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1] That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design. I can't wait until I can read the Economist…

I'm interested in this. As someone who doesn't pay that much attention to typography (beyond the obvious 'Papyrus is bad' stuff) what makes individual typefaces preferable over a standard typeface for all similarly structured content? (Besides branding, that is.)

It's pure marketing. There's no objective, measurable difference.
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