“If you somehow missed all the hype, the new iPad features a huge jump in screen resolution with the Retina display. Packing in four times the number of pixels in iPad 2 (and a million times more than an HDTV), the Retina display gives end users an unbelievable visual experience,” Igor Faletski writes for CNET.
“Yet what feels like beautifully simple technology for consumers can give Web site owners a new set of headaches,” Faletski explains. “The precise rendering of images on the Retina display reveals rough edges across the Web. Text may be pin-sharp, but put that text alongside photos, and those images don’t look so hot. Logos appear blurred. Even shopping cart buttons become grainy.”
Faletski writes, “Chances are virtually all Web sites will need to eventually catch up to the iPad’s high definition display; however, it’s more critical for those brands that lean on imagery to sell their products, such as fashion and apparel retailers, restaurants, hospitality companies and more.”
Here are four steps that can be taken today to adapt your Website to the new iPad Retina display:
1) Prioritize important images
2) Turn text into text
3) Boost button sizes
4) Increase logo size
Much more in the full article here.
“Turn text into text.”
Please.
I interpreted this as… text that some websites place into images. If you start with a grainy product, you will end up with a grainy product. Move that text to actual text, and the retina display can smooth the text and deliver a crisper product.
I have to deal with rasterized text all the time, and those of us in the printing industry have long understood that vector text will print crisper and more legible than rasterized text. That’s what they are trying to say.
But if they do that, then you will be able to cut & paste!.
“(and a million times more than an HDTV),”
Really?
REALLY!?
It should be noted that iPad (3) does not make raster images any more grainy than they are on earlier iPad or other tablets. Those images are grainy only comparing to printing quality text that is around it.
Well, in technical terms, what CNET really meant was “a gazillion” times more. I hope that cleared up any misconception.
Ha! 😀
Igor Faletski appears to have poor reading comprehension.
It’s not “a million times more than an HDTV” it’s “a million more than an HDTV”
Or, just the facts:
iPad 2048 x 1536 = 3,145,728
HDTV 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600
Difference: 1,072,128 more pixels than a HDTV. 😉
I can’t count how many places I go that have HDTV displays running a slide show related to the business/institution, with images that are grainier than a sand painting. If they haven’t the pride to make that look good, how are they going to deal with Retina displays?
Unfortunately this will inevitably lead to slower load times if these companies improve the resolution of their graphics.
Actually, vector images are much smaller than raster images, sometimes dramatically so. What needs to change is to get designers to understand the importance of designing graphics with the idea of scalability in mind.
3) Boost button sizes
4) Increase logo size
Normal UI controls handling have sizes set not in pixels, but in more abstract measurements.
Abstract measurements such as AUs, parsecs, and light years perhaps?
I did not mean raster images of buttons, but rather their sizes as control UI. No normal UI sets sizes in physical pixels. This is how even Windows machines could draw widows of the same proportional size no matter how high screen resolution you have once UI is scaled property.
So those #3 and #4 are quite pointless.
Hopefully one company whose designs will change is Apple. Now that everything is stuffed full of large file sizes the iPad will start shipping with 128GB and 250GB of NAND flash storage.
Once again, Apple raises the bar…
The real elephant in the room here is the increase in data traffic cell towers will have to deliver with larger and larger raster images pushing through the airwaves. I would not be a happy camper if I accessed a popular web site that used up all of my month’s data download allotment in a single day.
Patent: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Don’t do that.
Och! Spellchecker. “Patient”
3rd shoe: Patent works well, too! 🙂
I think the best thing web sites can do to support iPad 3 is stop using Flash 🙂
But why is this news ? Is it really any different that how they look on a high res monitor or cinema display ?
No would prefer the Internet world NOT make their sites larger for the sake of catering to iPad 3 owners.
Actually, I was hoping the guy was talking about ‘designing’ innovative hardware, like Apple has been doing for decades. It sure would help if Apple had some actual competition these days! But they don’t. So bleh. 😉
Oh, and BTW:
Scalable vector graphics, able to take advantage of the biggest and most pixel dense displays imaginable, have been around longer than the Mac. Hello! That’s a free clue! Take it and run with it! 😀
SVG @ Wikipedia
i remember when apple said we could use flash
macromedia owned it and it was cool
it let us make scalable vector based web graphics and buttons and stuff
it was fast and lean and made webpages faster to load
then adobe bought it and ruined it. now its a bloated piece of crap that has filled the web with crap
Yes its not an iPad 3 is an iPad 2.5 or what i call half-ass.
More resolution, more memory, more graphic processing memory, same old processor, going to go do a Youtube video of me cooking an egg on the back of it BearGrills style… Lol
I have even hear the rumbbling of developers talking about this… Sorry o through water on your party fire Mac News Geeks.