What is Digg?56 Comments
- cvrefugee, on 10/12/2007, -8/+41It's when resolution is tired of being under the reign of an oppressive king and they want to become an independent state or country.
- vudicarus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19What is Resolution Independence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_independence
Pardon me. Since the question is being asked a lot below, I thought I'd throw this link in here. - drlha, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23Vector graphics doesn't work with photorealistic icons, nor should it have to. Bitmaps have their place, and can be scaled nicely. Although vector icons are a nice idea, in reality they are pretty pointless.
- adurity, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24@Vyx36
Why stuck with 800x600? For the price of an upgrade to Leopard you could get a higher res monitor...why are you holding out? - Steeple, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18-"When is the last time you saw a beautiful photorealistic icon on a Mac that could not be recreated with vectors?"
every picture thumbnail ever? - DeathJux, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Also, developers are creating 512 x 512 icons for Leopard... this is going to make for some delicious eye-candy.
- drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13This is going to be a huge change for how we think of resolutions in the future. I'm glad this is finally being put into practice because this sort of concept isn't anything new, its just never been tried before. It means lazy programmers are gonna have to rely more on GUI layouts rather then hardcoding the location of objects on a dialog or window.
- SilentSpyder, on 10/12/2007, -11/+22They should make all icons vector. Sure it would take some computer power to render it, but it will scale nicely.
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13It is what is explained quite clearly in the article.
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Its got nothing to do with things "looking good" its all about not defining size by pixels. The idae is that if you have 2 17" LCD laptops, one with 1920x1024 and another with 1440x768, the Mac menu bar on each will be 1 cm high (for example), on both rather than it being smaller on the higher resolution screen because the pixels are smaller.
This is resolution independance in a nutshell, it has nothing to do with using vectors! - UltraNurd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12It might mean that poorly-designed older GUIs (e.g. abandonware that didn't follow Apple's HIG in the first place) will look bad on high-resolution displays.
- Sartori, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9You know how when you set your display to a really high resolution all the icons and text get really small? It stops that happening (unless you want it to) and makes everything smoother and crisper while staying the same size relative to everything else. So a big icon will be say quarter of the screen, whatever resolution you view it in.
People with low res displays probably won't notice as much of a difference as people with really high res ones. - falloutsyndrome, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8see my comment above. It basically means thats the textures of objects (images) aren't resolution dependent. Basically you can zoom in as far as you like, and it won't lose quality, or become pixilated. This will most likely be offloaded to the gpu because of its intensity and the new "core graphics" technology described in the leopard sneak peak.
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7No, resolution independance has got nothing to do with vectors. Most of what Apple is doing is using sufficiently high resolution bitmaps, and then scaling them down.
- danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It's not going to help you that much. It will help people with high resolution displays much more. Sure you will be able scale all the items on your display smaller, but they will be more pix-elated because you are ultimately limited to 800x600.
- reiggin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7That's basically what I want to know. I hear everyone saying "this is great" and "Wow, about time" but I honestly don't understand the concept. Can someone break it down and cite some examples of the impact it will have?
- friend18, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10What's resolution independence?
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6If you have a Tiger based Mac you can try it out right now using Quartz Debug. Its a bit buggy but I can confirm it has no effect on speed, not on my 1Ghz 12" Powerbook G4 anyway.
- tobyjoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I've been waiting to talk about this since they showed it during one of the WebKit seminars at WWDC this year. It's going to be really nice, I think, though, as someone else mentioned, designers, developers, and production artists are going to need to change a few habits.
- skoles, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9As with all of Apple's updates since OSX, the new releases tend to work fine if not better, on the old hardware. So you can still use your 4yr old Mac and enjoy most of the features of the latest OS.
Unlike Vista, which will require you to practically have a gaming rig to "benefit" from the eye candy. Something I could never wrap my head around since Apple was toting its visual fx as working on older models. - pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@drlha
Because everyone
http://www.wizard2.com/images/people/angelina_jolie_lite.jpg
knows you can't
http://www.wizard2.com/images/people/halley_barry.jpg
achieve photorealism
http://www.wizard2.com/images/people/shooter.jpg
with vectors.
http://wizard2.com/images/people/daydreamer.jpg
It just takes gradient meshes and a sh'load of talent and patience. - digga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Oh yeah? The three levels of font sizing (96dpi/120dpi/custom)? That's not exactly resolution-independence, is it?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7They should look exactly as they do now.
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You know not whereof you speak. Choosing from several fixed scaling factors is a far cry from resolution independence.
-jcr - anonym41414, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Nothing, and no.
This feature is going to be useful in the future, as displays (laptop displays, specifically) get more and more pixels crammed into the same number of square inches. The idea isn't for you to squeeze your windows down to fit more on the screen, but to scale your windows up so you can still use them comfortably on displays with more than 100-ish pixels to the linear inch. - rajulkabir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Um, you can adjust mouse acceleration in System Preferences.
And you can adjust it a whole lot better than in Windows, where you have to choose between pokey and light-speed.
And you can move the mouse to every pixel on the screen, unlike Windows, where it arbitrarily skips some pixels, which sucks massive ass in Photoshop. - Jimzip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Macs are overrated. If you want fluffy looking UIs go with Linux. If you want something cheap that works and has a vast supporting base of non exclusive hardware get a windows machine. If you want both, get a win-tel machine running Linux! If you don't want to understand how your machine works, get a mac."
Sigh. Do we get tired of hearing from people that have no idea about what they're talking about? Yes we do, that's why you're getting dugg down dude.
For many people, Mac OS X is invaluable. The interface is streamlined, extremely well thought out, and saves me a hell of a lot of time because it all works together, if you work in graphics or any kind of media you'd appreciate how much effort has gone into the design to make it easy and powerful to use. When you need something it's there, otherwise everything is out of your way.
You don't like OS X? You don't have to. But please quit making useless, unsubstantiated comments and let us hold intelligent conversations about the topic at hand.
Jimzip :D - Jimzip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Zuh?
Jimzip :D - 022A, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2pr0t0,
Nice spam.
Not only are your examples far from photorealistic. Photorealism in vector art is completely beside the point and clearly shown to be several posts before yours. - danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They will look exactly as they do know the problem is in the future displays will become higher resolution. If you run old programs your buttons could turn into a few mm wide. I think this is one of the reasons why Apple has not included at true HD display in their MBP like Dell has. The software is not ready until this has been out for a while.
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In Leopard, you'll be able to choose a global scale factor that all apps will follow. YOu can try it out right now in Tiger. Go and get the developer tools, and then run the "quartz debug" program. Choose "Show User Interface Resolution" from the tools menu, and you'll get a panel that lets you set the scale factor, which will apply to any apps you run after changing the scale.
-jcr - KyleMistry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And let them go on barraging us with these comments? You'll kill us all, DelMonte!
You'll kill us ALL! - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7In layman's terms, it means the same object(s) will look good whether it is viewed on a 17" display, or a 50" display.
- Vyx36, on 10/12/2007, -14/+14Great news for us Mac users stuck with 600x800 CRTs. :)
- applechristian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm not for resolution independence either.
I'm used to huge resolutions too, this isn't going to work for me. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3yeah but that's a thumbnail being used as an icon, they mean icons that were designed from the ground up as an icon. stop twisting people's meanings...
"your connotations are wearing my nerves thin. could it be semantics generating this mess we're in?" - applechristian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm not for this at all.
Yes sure, better resolutions, etc.
But think of the webmasters (like me, and others).
Css and graphics and etc. will now have to be measured in centimeters (cm) or inches (in) because of this resolution independence. The computer will then convert it into pixels.
As to why pixels wont work: the bigger the resolution, the smaller the pixels. If apple promises resolution independence (meaning the same size 'items, objects, icons, graphics' ) for each resolution, then it will have to be measures in centimetres or inches, because pixels get smaller and whenever you change a resolution it cannot change the pixel size for this.
Basically, the future coding for webmasters will be measured in an alternative way, which most of us are not used to.
Resolution Independence scares me. It scares me a lot. I'm a Mac user and I'm not happy.
This isn't for the best, it won't help anyone. If you can't read your screen, use a smaller resolution. - creosote7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ok..maybe someone can answer this for me. I've been spoiled with high resolution laptop displays (1680x1050 or 1900x1200) and I love having the extra room on my desktop to have several windows viewable at once. I plan on switching to a macbook or mbp soon but I'm dreading having to give up so many pixels on the resolution. Will this "resolution-independence" allow me to scale down the windows to make it appear as if I have a bigger desktop?
I know I can't the only one out there that cringes when I hear 1280x800..it just seems so small. - vitaboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Even if it is possible to create photorealistic images with vectors, it would require to much of a tradeoff in terms of CPU or GPU computation. Are you going to waste vast GPU cycles trying to vector render, say, 100+ icons in a directory or use nearly instantaneous scaling of 512x512 bitmaps to create a responsive interface?
This isn't a comp sci class dealing in idealized solutions - how the interface responds is just as important as a "beautiful" but impractical implementation. - maiku00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I wonder what this means when I'm working on a 300 dpi graphic? Would it not appear so gigantic compared to the rest of the screen?
- DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Man I'm tired of seeing kids posting that everything should be vectors and vectors are the future and that vectors can replace anything...
If you're one of these kids, you're probably too stupid or uninformed to understand whatever we could try write to make you understand that it's not the case. So I won't even try to explain, I would waste my time. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I choose all 3, and I can run all 3 on my MacBook. I have windows running right now, whee. manthrax, you suck.
- wordsofwisedumb, on 10/12/2007, -11/+8When is the last time you saw a beautiful photorealistic icon on a Mac that could not be recreated with vectors? Most photorealistic icons look horrible and are amateurish.
- newbill123, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5If a developer is serious enough about good user interface and documentation, they've long since hired a graphic designer to build their icons and static raster images in a vector program such as Freehand or Illustrator. Just making good looking printed (or ebook) documentation is reason enough for this expense. There's support for many vector graphics formats in OS X, if icon services aren't vector in Leopard it's probably just an issue of optimizing performance in the Finder by scaling large static bitmaps.
But when building a progress bar, a wave form editor, or 3d drawing program, a static vector image (of whatever format) isn't going to be what a developer wants (though there are codecs in Quicktime and other services that render a number of static vector formats). What this article is addressing are the tools developers use to make their dynamic interface elements. There have already been three great ways to generate resolution independent elements including generators in Core Image, Quartz's PDF-like vectors, or OpenGL wireframes. With a fixed resolution, these aren't required to use and often one can acheive better performance with munging a bitmap image. With resolution independence in Leopard, the need to use the resolution independent tools has grown. - KaserPro, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1I thought that was a read herring,
The whole point of quartz is that you can deal natively with vector based graphics, avoiding the whole difficulty with scaling rasters - Torv, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3This is also like "lets pretend everything is vector graphics", except it is not, but it looks like it is.
- howismydriving, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2Will this take up lots of CPU processing power. or will it be offloaded to the graphics card? Those with Intel GPUs or older Powerbooks may not be able to use this feature if it is CPU or GPU intensive.
- falloutsyndrome, on 10/12/2007, -13/+4another term for this is vector form. :D
- manthrax, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Another item of note.. Windows based PCs have been resolution independent since the early 90's. Way to step out of the stone age Apple. Now if only they would fix the lack of mouse acceleration that makes my mac mouse feel like a brick whenever I switch from my windows machine, oh yeah, and that rainbow wheel of doom... What is up with that?
Macs are overrated. If you want fluffy looking UIs go with Linux. If you want something cheap that works and has a vast supporting base of non exclusive hardware get a windows machine. If you want both, get a win-tel machine running Linux! If you don't want to understand how your machine works, get a mac. - jwigum, on 10/12/2007, -30/+5Interesting... Considering my Windows machine has been running at 96dpi for years.
I don't know the mac program lingo they used, but does that mean they'll go to vector based icons/interfaces?
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