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Pixel Perfect

daringfireball.net

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Re: Pixel Perfect

#121

Post by bluthru »

mcantelon wrote: post #43
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.

Some people focus on the substance rather than the style. Others do not. Much effort and attention is lost on the latter.

Catching resolutions up to print DPI is not "style", it purely a quantitative exercise.

The screen is the only component of computer hardware that we use at full capacity all of the time. It is much more important to get displays up to print resolution than a small clock speed increase.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#122

Post by ricardobeat »

cageface wrote: post #17
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…

I have an iPad 3 and an iPad 2. The "retina" display is certainly a nice upgrade but it's hardly essential. This is obviously where the industry has been heading for a while and the only thing interesting about it here is that Apple's supply chain dynamics makes it possible for them to get 6-12 months ahead of the competition.

Some text looks like crap on the old screen (iPad 1), with visible aliasing and color fringes - making zooming absolutely required for reading. Not so with the retina display.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#123

Post by fumar »

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 hope your right about the typographic future. This link argues that serifs are not more legible than sans serifs. http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s...

Re: Pixel Perfect

#124

Post by twodayslate »

I found this to be true with my phone. I currently have an iPhone 4 and I want to switch soon. However, looking at the other phone screens hurts my eyes. The image seems blurry.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#125

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Pixel Perfect

#126

Post by podperson »

Steko wrote: post #101
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…

You sure told him. May sound funny coming from a typography-obsessive whose website has used Verdana as the text face for its entire nine-year existence, but I just don’t care much for Verdana for anything other than use on relatively low-resolution displays at small sizes. (E.g. Verdana’s uppercase I and J. Ugh.) Interesting expansion of the two families, though. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/16/georgia-v…

I also find daringfireball's typeface to be too small to read comfortably on modern displays. (I understand picking Verdana back in 2002, but it's not so nice now.)

Re: Pixel Perfect

#127

Post by podperson »

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…

The New Yorker does indeed use two custom typefaces -- Irvin for headings, and a Caslon variation for body text. (Wikipedia says it's Adobe Caslon, but I seem to recall it having been a customized version, at least at some point in the past.)

On the website, the New Yorker seems to be using Irvin for its headlines, but Times New Roman for body text.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#128

Post by crazygringo »

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 can't wait until I can read the Economist online in the correct typeface.

It's possible, but with a lot of work. It's called EcoType. If you download a PDF of one of their "Special Reports" then you can use a font-extraction tool to generate a font file (possibly missing a few rare characters), then create a custom user style sheet for your browser that sets Economist.com body text to that typeface.

Whether it's worth it is a whole other question. ;)

Thankfully, the New Yorker just came out with their iPhone app which is typographically gorgeous.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#129

Post by podperson »

printer wrote: post #76
jmduke wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Every font is designed for a purpose. Serif fonts are designed to help the brain recognize the different letters. Comic Sans was designed to be used informal. Helvetica was designed to be used in signage. Verdana was designed to be readable from (72dpi) computer screens. And so on. So as screen resolutions increase a serif font can help the brain to recognize small letters increasing readability.

Serif fonts are designed to emulate Roman inscriptions, which had serifs to help water drain out of them without wearing them out (and thus reducing maintenance costs). The brain stuff is at best speculative and not backed by any data (and in any event is a post hoc rationalization).

In general, readability tests (per the original article) have produced equivocal results which seem to show mainly that people prefer the fonts they grew up with.

Re: Pixel Perfect

#130

Post by Aldor »

I bought a new MacBook Pro during WWDC this year. I had the option to get the RMBP, but I didn't, and I don't regret my decision. The performance vs. cost ratio of this laptop is significantly higher (plus I get a disc drive), and honestly with the high-res screen, I have to be a lot closer than my normal viewing distance to notice a difference between this and the RMBP.

Only thing I think I think I'll regret in the future is not getting an SSD. Oh well. I like my storage space more than my speed.

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