Towards A Retina Web

With the recent announcement and release of the Retina Macbook Pro, Apple has brought double-density screens to all of the product categories in its current lineup, significantly paving the way for the next wave of display standards. While the fourth-generation iPhone gave Reda Lemeden a taste of the “non-Retina” Web in 2010, he had to wait for the third-generation iPad to fully realize how fuzzy and outdated Web graphics and content images are. In the absence of industry-wide standards to streamline the process, each Web designer and developer is left to ensure that their users are getting the best experience, regardless of the display they are using.

Before diving into the nitty gritty, lets briefly cover some basic notions that are key to understanding the challenges and constraints of designing for multiple display densities. A device pixel (or physical pixel) is the tiniest physical unit in a display. Each and every pixel sets its own color and brightness as instructed by the operating system, while the imperceptible distance between these tiny dots takes care of tricking the eye into perceiving the full image. Screen density refers to the number of device pixels on a physical surface. It is often measured in pixels per inch (PPI). Apple has coined the marketing term “Retina” for its double-density displays, claiming that the human eye can no longer distinguish individual pixels on the screen from a “natural” viewing distance.