Give it time web developers will update their websites to higher resolution graphics to support 'retina' and it's still very early days yet.
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How not ready the world is for Retina
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They do, sure. And they look pretty good on the rMBP too. But a retina-enabled website looks even better on both.
Check out all the many websites showing how to do this for the iPhone 4, for a start. E.g. http://aralbalkan.com/3331
I think it's going to be a long time before the internet in general caters for retina screens, since Apple are the only PC manufacturers that use them. Web page design is always about building for the lowest common denominator and the largest demographic, neither of which describes the retina Macbook Pro.
I suspect that Apple will come up with some new algorithms to smooth out standard res images which will have to do until Windows PC manufacturers start producing similar spec screens in large numbers.
I suspect that Apple will come up with some new algorithms to smooth out standard res images which will have to do until Windows PC manufacturers start producing similar spec screens in large numbers.
Most websites are optimized for a resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768, and most websites' icons are bitmap images, which don't scale well when increasing resolution. For the future the best would be to use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for designing icons.
For bigger images, most websites use bitmap images that are saved in the JPEG format. This format, compared to raw images or formats such as TIFF which weight in megabytes, reduces the size of the original image by downgrading its quality. This allows websites to serve webpages and images fastly (low latency is an important factor for web servers in order to serve pages in a descent time). So the question here would be whether the websites would sacrifice speed for quality in order to support retina or vice versa...
For bigger images, most websites use bitmap images that are saved in the JPEG format. This format, compared to raw images or formats such as TIFF which weight in megabytes, reduces the size of the original image by downgrading its quality. This allows websites to serve webpages and images fastly (low latency is an important factor for web servers in order to serve pages in a descent time). So the question here would be whether the websites would sacrifice speed for quality in order to support retina or vice versa...
Apple isn't the only manufacturer going to high definition/hi density screens. Things will move along nicely motivated by all the major manufacturers. Too many folks here are thinking only inside an Apple box. The web won't change for Apple Retina, but it will change because there are forces stronger than Apple that will drive the change. Apple is still one of the smallest computer manufacturers. A fact that gets lost inside Apple forums.
But apple are very influential just look at poor adobe dropping mobile flash from next month and I am sure dell, hp, asus are all scrambling to get higher resolution screens to market to compete which can only be a good thing.
This isn't a question of format with regards to non-scalable formats. It's a matter of pixel density.
Just got my MBP-R base model, and got a welcome email from Apple. Most websites are not retina, I will post my impressions later. But just a quick screenshot that shows how not ready the world is for Retina right now. It is an email from Apple and they probably know I will probably be reading it on my new computer.
The fonts and reading experience are just stellar. I kinda feel really sad for my old computer which is sitting right next to my Retina right now, I downloaded Spotify and just played a song, and the song that played was "Pale Horse" by Smashing Pumpkins. I have never felt this emotional about upgradingMy old machine has been a great great machine.
More later.
If I'm not wrong, the highest resolution that the UI would scale up to is only 1920x1200 which is WUXGA. Meaning that anyone with a WUXGA screen (which has been extremely common for at least 5 years now) would see the same thing as you do.
It's not a retina problem, and anyone with a screen of similar or higher resolution would have the same "problem" as you do. According to Steam, at least 30% of all users have a resolution of at least 1920 horizontal pixels.
In short, it's not a new problem and has existed for years now.
There have been computers with UI elements the same size has in the Retina....but not the same resolution or pixel density.
I would think otherwise. Because this is 2880x1800 scaled to a lower resolution, so images are not stacking up to quality of the screen. As for 1920x1200, a smaller res image would just look tiny at 100% scale, but not look messed up. My 2 cents.
Designing for a current statistic as opposed to designing for where technology is headed is a factor which separates good designers from bad designers.
Yup, this is true and I agree with you.
I actually misunderstood your thread because you simply mentioned that most websites are not retina but didn't describe the issue any further. From your screenshot, I thought you were actually complaining that most websites only take up a small portion of the web browser rather than utilizing the whole space as websites tend to be coded for 800x600 or 1024x768.
This is why we will see adoption of procedurally-generated context instead of image-based one. CSS3 already is a step in this direction. I guess we will also see some sort of new layered image formats for pixel data, which can store multiple versions of the same image at different pixel densities, but the server will only serve the appropriate one.
Perhaps the sad thing is that the HTML was originally intended to describe content by function and the browser was responsible for determining how it looked. When the Internet went commercial, the sites were concerned with presentation and presentation was forced. An image was forced to be 25% of the display width, for instance, rather than a certain number of pixels wide, such as the width of the original image. Images (or worse, flash) replaced text to get full control over placement. Now we are paying the price. It's already been happening because of the small screens of handheld devices. Websites are coded to match the presumed display. It doesn't have to be. The browsers are all capable of doing layout themselves if the websites let them!
Websites used to be coded to look best on 640x480 displays. When people started getting 800x600 or 1024x768, pictures were either tiny or blown up and pixellated. The web caught up, and it will again.
Right now, Retina is one high-priced model from one manufacturer. Within a few years it'll be standard on medium and higher laptops.
As far as I remember, 1280x960 / 1280x1024 has been pretty mainstream since 10 years ago, and 1280x800 is probably one of the lowest common resolutions left today. Don't see websites moving to that though.
As far as I remember, 1280x960 / 1280x1024 has been pretty mainstream since 10 years ago, and 1280x800 is probably one of the lowest common resolutions left today. Don't see websites moving to that though.
Believe it or not, the world and the internet didn't start 10 years ago.
im a web developer and by far one of the primary things is speed and consistency. I'm not going to put up high res photos that only <1% of the viewing base sees.
How fast your web page loads is very key to SEO and I'm not going to sacrifice viewer base just so someone with a retina macbook will view it. Period.
Apple made a huge mistake with these displays. The rest of the computing community is not going to jump on board until prices come WAY down. $3k for a laptop is way too much. You can try to justify it all you want but as fast as technology moves, the $3k laptop will be obsolete in a few years(best hope).
I can show you my google analytics and what percentage are MAC OS and Windows OS. Mac is less than 11% of my web page viewers...I would venture to say that no more than 10% of those have a retina mac.
How fast your web page loads is very key to SEO and I'm not going to sacrifice viewer base just so someone with a retina macbook will view it. Period.
Apple made a huge mistake with these displays. The rest of the computing community is not going to jump on board until prices come WAY down. $3k for a laptop is way too much. You can try to justify it all you want but as fast as technology moves, the $3k laptop will be obsolete in a few years(best hope).
I can show you my google analytics and what percentage are MAC OS and Windows OS. Mac is less than 11% of my web page viewers...I would venture to say that no more than 10% of those have a retina mac.
This has been a problem for years for some displays. The pixel density of the retina display is just making it more noticeable. Display tech has evolved quite a bit in the last decade obviously (color gamut, response time, back lighting, power consumption, etc.) but in terms of resolution it's mostly been stuck in a Rut. I had a 15" notebook with a 1920x1200 screen over 8 years ago which was before any serious OS resolution independence implementation had been made. Using the Windows ppi scaling made any fixed-pixel image crap unless you left it at 1:1. But you had to squint to use it.
Windows 7 still sucks at pixel scaling and being resolution independent compared to Lion. I set it at 200% which in theory should be fine but it did all sorts of weird things and scaled the mouse arrow oddly (it wasn't 1:2). I have it at 150% and there are less problems but problems are still there.
So IMHO this should have been dealt with by now. I mean serious OS attempts at resolution independence and pixel scaling. Screens should have been increasing in resolution instead of still being 1200x800 or what not and because they weren't, developers haven't had a reason to address it yet any wise post Web 2.0 web developer should know better than to use images for UI elements by now.
It's the other images and banners and stuff like that you guys are seeing. To be honest, these same things are pixelated even on the iPhone's retina display. I don't have an iPad, but since it's visible on the phone I don't know how you're missing it. It also doesn't really bother me. Neither did my non-retina apps either (knowing in some cases the increased res would decrease performance). But that's just me. It isn't all scaling related either because some of these images still look pixelated on my 1080p laptop. The 'screen door' effect is just masking it. Others are related to scaling, but it's pseudo 1:1 pixel mapping. 1 pixel becomes 4.
It's like those 4k projectors at the cineplex which only play 3D movies and 2k material, the latter being scaled 2x in both directions eliminated the screen door effect.
Windows 7 still sucks at pixel scaling and being resolution independent compared to Lion. I set it at 200% which in theory should be fine but it did all sorts of weird things and scaled the mouse arrow oddly (it wasn't 1:2). I have it at 150% and there are less problems but problems are still there.
So IMHO this should have been dealt with by now. I mean serious OS attempts at resolution independence and pixel scaling. Screens should have been increasing in resolution instead of still being 1200x800 or what not and because they weren't, developers haven't had a reason to address it yet any wise post Web 2.0 web developer should know better than to use images for UI elements by now.
It's the other images and banners and stuff like that you guys are seeing. To be honest, these same things are pixelated even on the iPhone's retina display. I don't have an iPad, but since it's visible on the phone I don't know how you're missing it. It also doesn't really bother me. Neither did my non-retina apps either (knowing in some cases the increased res would decrease performance). But that's just me. It isn't all scaling related either because some of these images still look pixelated on my 1080p laptop. The 'screen door' effect is just masking it. Others are related to scaling, but it's pseudo 1:1 pixel mapping. 1 pixel becomes 4.
It's like those 4k projectors at the cineplex which only play 3D movies and 2k material, the latter being scaled 2x in both directions eliminated the screen door effect.
If you can't figure out how to serve alternate image content to retina viewers and avoid negatively impacting SEO, you're probably not a great web developer in the first place.
It's not much different than responsive web design, which also requires additional code (and possibly images), but at this point is quickly becoming non-optional. Either you figure out a strategy now, or you wait and play catchup later.