3 ms·

While these decisions all sound stupid in principle, when you actually think about it they make a great deal of sense. They all stem from one root requirement:

While these decisions all sound stupid in principle, when you actually think about it they make a great deal of sense. They all stem from one root requirement: Regular websites should work with minimum problems on an iOS device. This is a requirement that made sense when iOS came out years ago, and honestly still makes sense today. It's why browsing on an iOS device is so damn awesome. That explains the different reported size. Once you have a different reported size, you enter the viewport and zoom issues. But at that point, all the decisions intertwine and make sense amongst themselves. Now, why isn't there a 1px=1 physical pixel setting? That's a different question. By which I kind of mean, “the retina display is probably the reason there is no such setting”. Regardless, that's a missing feature. The ones that are there all make sense, and aren't nearly as foolish as they sound at first glance.

Silhouette 15y ago
I agree that the viewport-based rendering makes a lot of sense if you assume that all web sites are not designed for your device. Arguably, it even makes sense as the default behaviour. My objection is only that if you have a team who are actually willing to go the extra mile and provide a customised UI that plays to each device's specific strengths, it's absurdly difficult for them to get it right. CSS media queries actually aren't bad for this sort of work in either design or device support these days, give or take some absurdities involving scrollbars. All I want is for all those juicy features to actually tell me about real pixels. Then I can fix my font sizes and icon spacings and graphic dimensions to look pixel-perfect and still remain accessible and draw at a similar physical size on all devices.
sopooneo 15y ago
I wondered for a long time how it would be handled when screen pixel densities got high enough. There are a couple ways to handle it, and apple took the only one that seems completely backwards compatible: they abstracted the notion of "1px". I guess it couldn't have really evolved any other way, but damn that is messy.
- krakensden 15y ago
  A CSS pixel has never been an actual pixel- it's 1 pixel at 96 dpi
  - sopooneo 15y ago
    Oh. Thank you. I hadn't known that.

Silhouette 15y ago

I agree that the viewport-based rendering makes a lot of sense if you assume that all web sites are not designed for your device. Arguably, it even makes sense as the default behaviour. My objection is only that if you have a team who are actually willing to go the extra mile and provide a customised UI that plays to each device's specific strengths, it's absurdly difficult for them to get it right. CSS media queries actually aren't bad for this sort of work in either design or device support these days, give or take some absurdities involving scrollbars. All I want is for all those juicy features to actually tell me about real pixels. Then I can fix my font sizes and icon spacings and graphic dimensions to look pixel-perfect and still remain accessible and draw at a similar physical size on all devices.

sopooneo 15y ago

I wondered for a long time how it would be handled when screen pixel densities got high enough. There are a couple ways to handle it, and apple took the only one that seems completely backwards compatible: they abstracted the notion of "1px". I guess it couldn't have really evolved any other way, but damn that is messy.

krakensden 15y ago
A CSS pixel has never been an actual pixel- it's 1 pixel at 96 dpi
- sopooneo 15y ago
  Oh. Thank you. I hadn't known that.