[whatwg] Features for responsive Web design

[Mathew Marquis]

On Oct 10, 2012, at 4:14 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 9, 2012, at 2:49 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Mark Callow wrote:
>>>> On 2012/10/06 7:09, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>>>> I agree, when there's 3x displays, this could get to the point where we
>>>>> need to solve it. :-)
>>>> 
>>>> With the current displays, it's just not that big a deal, IMHO. If by 3x
>>>> you mean displays whose dpi is 3x that of CSS pixels (96dpi), they
>>>> already exist in retail products. I saw 2 last week.
>>> 
>>> Can you elaborate?
>>> 
>>> How many device pixels per CSS pixel do browsers on those devices use? Are
>>> they just making CSS pixels smaller, or are they actually using 3x?
>> 
>> http://www.zdnet.com/google-nexus-10-tablet-to-have-higher-res-display-than-ipad-7000005466/
>> appears to be 299dpi
>> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=22223 appears to be 440dpi
>> 
>> These devices aren't out yet, but I suspect browsers would be
>> more-or-less as high-dpi as possible.
> 
> This page lists several devices with physical DPI higher than 288 (3x the nominal CSS dpi) but none with a CSS pixel ratio greater than 2x. (To be fair, the data is incomplete and may be inaccurate, though to my knowledge the entries for Apple devices are all correct). So it's not a given that the cited hardware dpi values would lead to higher CSS pixel ratios in the corresponding software.

No, but we do know that things are continuing to trend towards higher PPI displays, and that at some point that may lead to a higher CSS pixel ratio. As a member of the jQuery Mobile project I’ve seen this for myself with the test devices we’re receiving constantly—every new screen is sharper than the last.

In fairness, no, we can’t predict the future one way or the other. That’s exactly why it’s better to plan for it than not.