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Resolution Independence
- Thread starter Luigi239
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All resolution independence is measurement of elements on the computer screen in units like inches or cm. So you could run a display like 7680×4800 on a MacBook with real world quality.
But only if your macbook comes with a 7680 x 4800 pixel screen... which I doubt they will for quite some time. A macbook with a 1280 x 800 pixel screen won't magically grow any pixels.
If you're having trouble reading text on your screen or seeing icons resolution independence will allow you to make things on your current screen bigger... beyond that there's not much benefit to the technology given the hardware you already have.
That is the reason I will buy Leopard, I want Resolution Independence (along some other features).
Just to clarify... you're not going to be able to run a resolution any higher then 1280x800. Sorry if that's obvious but I guess it could be easy to confuse so I figured I'd repeat it.
The only benefit (and I mean only with your current hardware) is that you'll be able to potentially have things bigger on the screen without a loss in quality. LCD's don't scale as well as CRTs with lower resolutions so this will be a very good thing for visually challenged users.
I want the resolution independence feature for my eyes and it will be easier for the eyes to read.
Ok, that makes sense. Thanks!
Maybe you're being sarcastic, but if Nazmac knows what resolution independence actually is, he didn't express it very well. Resolution independence effectively allows different applications to be run at different resolutions than what the screen is set to. One of the primary advantages of this is that developers can make something so that it appears the same size on everyone's screen, regardless of what that person's screen resolution is set to.
Resolution Independence lets you zoom both ways. You can try it in Tiger with the developer tools installed. You can, for example, set the scale to 0.5 in which case everything draws one half it's normal size using the available pixel resolution of the screen. So whilst you can see more it's a bit less clear. Note that in Tiger this is very flaky with a lot of apps showing drawing issues and some flat out crashing.
So to answer the OPs question you don't get any more pixels but you can get the same virtual effect...
So to answer the OPs question you don't get any more pixels but you can get the same virtual effect...
It means, right now Apple won't sell a 13" Macbook with a resolution of 1900x1200, because all text and GUI elements are designed in fixed pixel sizes, and tiny pixels means tiny text and buttons you can't read as easily.
With Leopard's resolution independence, you could have 4 or 8 or 16 times the pixels in your screen, and all your GUI elements buttons, text, icons, etc. will stay the same visual size.
This is what it will do. Currently when a developer writes code to draw to the screen he might say that a line is to be "three pixels thick". But now with "resolution independence" he will say "make the line 0.5 mm thick" and Leopard will compute the number of pixels needed to make the line 0.5mm thick.
Why do you as a user care? Because if you were to buy a yet to be anounced ultra-resolution LCD scren that has 200 pixels per inch and the developers were still drawing test based on X pixels tall you could not read the screen. OK, another way to look at it -- With "resolution independence" when you buy an LCD with more pixels per inch you will get sharper test, not smaller test.
True. However, it must be said that browser developers are working on resolution independence as well. Firefox 3 will be mostly res. independent for instance.
Furthermore, right now most images have to be altered specifically for the web, have the resolution changed from 300DPI to 75DPI. When both OS and browser are resolution independent web-developers can stop doing/needing this.
I think I saw some discussion at Mozilla about proposing a standard for the browser to tell the server which DPI the client is using.