Retina Macs herald a big change for Web Design

Posted by The News Team  at June 12th, 2012

Whilst I join a large queue of people all wanting a new MacBook Pro with Retina display, I couldn’t help but wonder what the impact will be on the web design and development world.

The landscape is now littered with a huge range of web capable devices. I remember when making your web design function on all the desktop browsers presented a big enough challenge. Now we’re expected to make web front-ends provide consistent functionality across a huge, disparate and often motley array of devices.

Most web design is still done at 72dpi. It worked back then and still works today. But on the new MacBook pro you have over three times as many pixels per inch (220dpi) so something that is roughly an inch across on most monitors will be a third of that on the new MacBook Pro.

I remember Microsoft trying to address this with their Twips way back before Facebook was even a glimmer in a pre-pubescent Zuckerberg’s eye. Today we have to be more innovative. Getting the presentation side of your web front-end is a big challenge today. You can bet other manufacturers will start making laptops and maybe even desktop monitors with similar resolutions to Apple’s retina display. So make sure your web deployment is built by someone who’s grown up through the changing world – someone who plans ahead.