trying not to reopen the physical length units / DPI in resolution MQs thread but failing from Edward O'Connor on 2012-04-24 (www-style@w3.org from April 2012)

From: Edward O'Connor <eoconnor@apple.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:05:06 -0700
To: www-style@w3.org
Message-id: <m2wr54pyzx.fsf@eoconnor.apple.com>

Hi,

An iPhone 4 has an actual resolution of 326dpi, whereas the new iPad has
a resolution of 264dpi. Yet, insofar as the resolution media query is
concerned, both devices have the same "resolution" (192 'dpi').

It makes me really sad that Web authors can't simply go to Wikipedia's
"List of displays by pixel density" page[1], cut and paste, and end up
with a stylesheet that does what they mean. We need to fix this.


Ted

P.S. While we're at it, I second Florian's suggestion (from several
months ago) that we adopt 'device-pixel-ratio' as an official media
query. It's easy to use; authors readily understand how to use it to
distinguish between Retina displays and low-DPI displays.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_density

Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:05:51 UTC