4 ms·

You shouldn't need to know if it's an iPad Mini. If your fonts / buttons are too small, then just make them bigger. Easy. This will then mean it will be even

You shouldn't need to know if it's an iPad Mini. If your fonts / buttons are too small, then just make them bigger. Easy. This will then mean it will be even more accessible on the 10" device. Plus we've never bothered to know the PPI of the screens before, I've got a 15" screen that is 1920x1080 as well as a 50" screen. But I don't see anyone checking for that. Just stick to reasonable sized fonts and buttons and you should be good.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Alternatively make it user adjustable - good for accessibility too.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - taligent 14y ago
    Yes. Because sight-impaired people are a mythical creature I only read about in books.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      But not large print books because that might suggest that they were real.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Duplicate of a comment I made below but: There seem to be two main things here - touch targets and fonts. All the reviews have suggested that by and large touch targets on existing apps are fine which suggests that it's not only possible but actually pretty simple to size them such that they're fine for both devices. Fonts are somewhat different. There have been comments which suggests that some fonts are smaller than you'd want on the mini but the other side of that is that there is no one "right" font size. When I was in my 20s frankly the smaller the better, now I've turned 40 I'm happier with larger. I agree configurability can be a cop out (and iOS is almost a monument to that view) but there are some things where there are really good reasons why you might make it something the user can work with and this feels like one.
    - 54mf 14y ago
      "I agree configurability can be a cop out (and iOS is almost a monument to that view) but there are some things where there are really good reasons why you might make it something the user can work with..." Totally agree! For example, allowing a user to make a site's font larger is great for accessibility - and just plain nicer for folks with less than perfect eyesight. "...and this feels like one." Totally disagree! ;) The issue at hand isn't accessibility, it's fundamental user experience. Since the first iPhone came out, the core of Apple's UI guidelines has been (paraphrasing, of course) "don't make anything smaller than 44px, because that's the smallest area an average-sized finger can reliably tap." Now, they've thrown that out the window. 44px on iPad isn't the same physical size as on iPad Mini, and that's where designers run in to trouble. Every element on a page - form fields and buttons, line height, images, spacing around and between content, etc etc - all need to be adjusted for the physical difference in size between the iPad and iPad Mini. A gap between two buttons that is "just right" on iPad may very well be too small on iPad Mini, and we, as designers, have no way to make it better. That's the problem.
      - jkubicek 14y ago
        44px on an iPad has always been larger than on the iPhone. 44px on an iPad mini will be the exact same size as on an iPhone.
      - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
        The and this feels like one was actually intended to suggest that tweaking font size feels like something that should be user controllable. In terms of the 44px - the original iPhone and iPad had different PPIs, and the current iPhones and iPads also have different PPIs, so the 44px has never mapped to a constant physical size across all devices. In actual fact the iPad mini has exactly the same PPI as the original iPhone (163) which was presumably what the UI guidelines had in mind which means that 44px should be perfect for it. 44px on the iPad will actually allow more area than the smallest possible area. This is probably why pretty much every iPad app has been is completely usable on the iPad mini. Certainly the fact that existing apps are fine undermines any suggestion that everything needs to be adjusted - if anything the evidence is that nothing does. While I'm sure there are some exceptions to that it'll be relatively few and the best approach is probably to scale everything and have a little more space than the minimum on other displays rather than to try and code individually for each one.
calinet6 14y ago
Dilemma: the size of a finger doesn't change just because your screen is higher resolution. A button and interface designed for the mini might look goofy on the larger device; an interface designed for the larger iPad might be entirely unusable on the Mini. And it's reasonable for designers to want to solve that problem. Furthermore, your example is anecdotal and fairly meaningless. I've got a 15" screen that's 2880x1800, so what of it? I definitely don't run it at native resolution—it's scaled 2x, or 1.5x down. And it Just Works because there are APIs for native applications and in CSS that expose the pixel density so that developers can deal with it gracefully. Why not do the same for other devices which are also supposed to be high resolution—and more importantly—resolution independent? The truth is, all of these devices have different pixel densities, and we're supposed to be moving in a resolution-independent direction, such that the physical size of the device and the number of pixels on its screen are completely arbitrary and controllable variables. Especially on mobile, interfaces depend on physical size, not on resolution; the size of a the main input mechanism does not depend on screen resolution or device size—it is static. It is a finger. We should be able to control the UI correctly instead of kludging around the problem. This idea that you shouldn't need to design apps correctly is simply an excuse for the lack of means to do so. It's a poor argument.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  The size difference between an iPad and iPad mini is nowhere near 1920x1200 vs 1280x800 on a 15" screen, it's only 20% smaller (44px vs 36px). http://jsbin.com/inuxah/1 http://jsbin.com/inuxah/1
  - calinet6 14y ago
    What if they made a device that was 2 inches smaller than that with the same resolution? Surely that would be unimaginable. The need for good standards remains.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      They wouldn't, because it would have too high DPI. That's why they went for a multiple with Retina screens. I remember seeing an Android with a 1280x800 display or similar, using "mobile-optimized" sites was a pain.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

Alternatively make it user adjustable - good for accessibility too.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- taligent 14y ago
  Yes. Because sight-impaired people are a mythical creature I only read about in books.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    But not large print books because that might suggest that they were real.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Duplicate of a comment I made below but: There seem to be two main things here - touch targets and fonts. All the reviews have suggested that by and large touch targets on existing apps are fine which suggests that it's not only possible but actually pretty simple to size them such that they're fine for both devices. Fonts are somewhat different. There have been comments which suggests that some fonts are smaller than you'd want on the mini but the other side of that is that there is no one "right" font size. When I was in my 20s frankly the smaller the better, now I've turned 40 I'm happier with larger. I agree configurability can be a cop out (and iOS is almost a monument to that view) but there are some things where there are really good reasons why you might make it something the user can work with and this feels like one.
  - 54mf 14y ago
    "I agree configurability can be a cop out (and iOS is almost a monument to that view) but there are some things where there are really good reasons why you might make it something the user can work with..." Totally agree! For example, allowing a user to make a site's font larger is great for accessibility - and just plain nicer for folks with less than perfect eyesight. "...and this feels like one." Totally disagree! ;) The issue at hand isn't accessibility, it's fundamental user experience. Since the first iPhone came out, the core of Apple's UI guidelines has been (paraphrasing, of course) "don't make anything smaller than 44px, because that's the smallest area an average-sized finger can reliably tap." Now, they've thrown that out the window. 44px on iPad isn't the same physical size as on iPad Mini, and that's where designers run in to trouble. Every element on a page - form fields and buttons, line height, images, spacing around and between content, etc etc - all need to be adjusted for the physical difference in size between the iPad and iPad Mini. A gap between two buttons that is "just right" on iPad may very well be too small on iPad Mini, and we, as designers, have no way to make it better. That's the problem.
    - jkubicek 14y ago
      44px on an iPad has always been larger than on the iPhone. 44px on an iPad mini will be the exact same size as on an iPhone.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      The and this feels like one was actually intended to suggest that tweaking font size feels like something that should be user controllable. In terms of the 44px - the original iPhone and iPad had different PPIs, and the current iPhones and iPads also have different PPIs, so the 44px has never mapped to a constant physical size across all devices. In actual fact the iPad mini has exactly the same PPI as the original iPhone (163) which was presumably what the UI guidelines had in mind which means that 44px should be perfect for it. 44px on the iPad will actually allow more area than the smallest possible area. This is probably why pretty much every iPad app has been is completely usable on the iPad mini. Certainly the fact that existing apps are fine undermines any suggestion that everything needs to be adjusted - if anything the evidence is that nothing does. While I'm sure there are some exceptions to that it'll be relatively few and the best approach is probably to scale everything and have a little more space than the minimum on other displays rather than to try and code individually for each one.

calinet6 14y ago

Dilemma: the size of a finger doesn't change just because your screen is higher resolution. A button and interface designed for the mini might look goofy on the larger device; an interface designed for the larger iPad might be entirely unusable on the Mini. And it's reasonable for designers to want to solve that problem. Furthermore, your example is anecdotal and fairly meaningless. I've got a 15" screen that's 2880x1800, so what of it? I definitely don't run it at native resolution—it's scaled 2x, or 1.5x down. And it Just Works because there are APIs for native applications and in CSS that expose the pixel density so that developers can deal with it gracefully. Why not do the same for other devices which are also supposed to be high resolution—and more importantly—resolution independent? The truth is, all of these devices have different pixel densities, and we're supposed to be moving in a resolution-independent direction, such that the physical size of the device and the number of pixels on its screen are completely arbitrary and controllable variables. Especially on mobile, interfaces depend on physical size, not on resolution; the size of a the main input mechanism does not depend on screen resolution or device size—it is static. It is a finger. We should be able to control the UI correctly instead of kludging around the problem. This idea that you shouldn't need to design apps correctly is simply an excuse for the lack of means to do so. It's a poor argument.

ricardobeat 14y ago
The size difference between an iPad and iPad mini is nowhere near 1920x1200 vs 1280x800 on a 15" screen, it's only 20% smaller (44px vs 36px). http://jsbin.com/inuxah/1 http://jsbin.com/inuxah/1
- calinet6 14y ago
  What if they made a device that was 2 inches smaller than that with the same resolution? Surely that would be unimaginable. The need for good standards remains.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    They wouldn't, because it would have too high DPI. That's why they went for a multiple with Retina screens. I remember seeing an Android with a 1280x800 display or similar, using "mobile-optimized" sites was a pain.