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I've read this before, and I sympathize with his gripes, but it strikes me as a UX minefield to abandon the conceit now. If for no other reason, it's very usef

I've read this before, and I sympathize with his gripes, but it strikes me as a UX minefield to abandon the conceit now. If for no other reason, it's very useful to see the "box filter" effect when magnifying images when doing pixel art manipulation (still relevant for most cellphones and portable devices) as well as examining image compression quality. If most image viewers default to an interpolated view for magnification, I can see many graphics professionals' jobs get worse as it becomes even harder to convince to clients provide vector image files or raster images of sufficiently high resolution, since end users wouldn't see such an obvious distinction anymore.

jacobolus 16y ago
The “box filter effect” is only really helpful to someone who understands that the appearance of the magnified boxes is not remotely like the appearance of the final image. Its main utility is showing pixel artist that the samples are discrete, and very explicitly indicating their spacing. I don’t agree with you that the upsized box UI is necessarily the most intuitive or useful, but instead is just the only UI that has really been tested. I can imagine several other possibilities, for example showing a smooth interpolation (indicating something closer to real-world appearance) overlaid by a circle at each sample center (indicating color of the discrete sample). [That's an idea off the top of my head; I don't know if it would work in practice.]