What is a Retina Ready Website?
Retina is a phrase coined by Apple with the advent of the iPhone 4. The display size of the iPhone 4 is 3.5”, at a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels. At this resolution, at an optimal viewing distance, the human eye struggles to distinguish individual pixels, so the technology was branded Retina display.
Retina and high resolution displays in general are like HD TV, pretty soon everyone will have one. Your website will look really bad on a high-res display if you don’t change a few things to make it Retina Ready website. How bad? Zoom in to 200% on your website logo or one of your images, that’s exactly what it looks like on a Retina display (but worse because everything else like text is super crisp in comparison).
Just to give you an idea, on a MacBook Pro with 15” display the pixel resolution is 220 pixels per inch (PPI) as opposed to most older monitors which are 72 (PPI). It means that Retina display devices show more pixels per square inch, resulting in sharper images. A device pixel is the smallest physical unit in a display. On Retina devices, images with higher resolutions (more pixels per square inch) are required.
A Retina display, displaying a Retina Ready website that serves Retina ready graphics (higher resolution) will display the sharpest images and the brightest, more vivid colors. A Retina display device such as an iPad 3 serving non Retina images (normal resolution) will result in poor quality images and a less than optimal user experience. The ultimate aim of Retina display is to improve the user experience and make screen quality almost on a par with print quality.
Benefits of a Retina Ready Website
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Sharper images for Retina Ready website:
The entire idea of the retina ready technology is to show sharper images. The idea behind Retina Ready website is to create something that would look as sharp as it would in print. Colors are vivid and bright because you get more pixels per inch on retina ready devices. It’s essentially like high definition for your laptop, phone or tablet.
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Better aesthetics for responsive on Retina Ready website:
What some may not know is that creating retina ready website allows for sharper fonts. When we sometimes zoom into webpages on websites, we end up stretching out some fonts that aren’t able to be stretched. Many of these fonts aren’t to be used in such a way and give us the same pixeled look we may get from some images.
A Retina ready website helps smooth over fonts. There are also some fonts that are prepared for retina ready website and will maintain their image quality when zoomed in (or even out) on retina devices. -
Designing with even more detail for Retina Ready website:
Minimalism has become widely popular because it’s a simple concept to understand and design for. The idea is to remain as clean as possible and rid yourself of the extra unnecessary elements or effects . Every so often, there are subtle details thrown into these types of themes, as well as others that are sometimes hard to see on regular screens. Retina devices are not only helpful in their high quality image projection but also in the brightness of their screen.
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Your Site is Already Unimpressive to about 30 Millions if it is not Retina Ready website:
Your web site is suffering right this minute if you are not retina ready. Over 30 million users have purchased these Apple devices with this sharper screen feature. When they view your site, images are pixelated, fonts are tough to read and overall there’s probably a bad aesthetic. If you know your audience is probably the same audience that has these devices, it may be time to go ahead and prepare your site to become retina ready.
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What about the future?
Apple has already released an iMac in 2014 with Retina 5K display has four times as many pixels as the standard 27‑inch iMac display. So what about next year? If your website does not have good quality on a normal Retina screen, how does it appear on the already released 4k or 5k Retina screens? You have the choice to use the new technology for your own benefits, or leave your business behind. No one would believe that you offer a high quality product or service, if you can’t produce a high quality modern website to represent you.
So what happens if you have a website that is not Retina Ready?
Don’t worry, you can upgrade your graphics and content images for Retina displays. There are many techniques and tools available to do this (depending on your site structure, image types and browser options). I2I VISION can help you to choose the best options for your website.
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