I have run into a bit of, well, I’m not completely sure what. I’ve been working with some very nice folks for awhile on a website, and they keep telling me the site is too “big”. The logo is too big the images are too big, everything is too big…
When I started working with them, I thought their original site was visually too small. So yes, I did up the ante a bit, but I’ve been professionally making images for over 30 years and websites for nearly half that… how could I be making things over-proportioned?
So I have been trying to work out how big too big is. Today sent me actual camera snaps of their 15" MBP screen to show me what they are seeing - and the images were HUGE. To duplicate the look on my 17" 2011 MBP required between 2 and three levels of zoom. Irk!?
The one bit of photo documentation that suggested any explanation was of their screen resolution setting - their MBP is apparently a retina screen and the setting they are using is retina best…
I don’t own a retina device, I have no experience with such things… but could this be why the site I’ve made looks so big to them and why the site they made looks so small to me?
I don’t have a retina MBP so no experience with the settings, and I only have access to a retina iPad, but I have occasionally noticed a problem with graphics rendering oversized (sometimes, but not always due to a typo in my CSS). Whether what I’ve seen is the same as the problem you’re having I don’t know for certain, but it does kinda sound as though it could be a setting issue. I too would be interested to know the actual cause.
On 27 Sep 2013, at 02:08, The Big Erns email@hidden wrote:
I don’t own a retina device, I have no experience with such things… but could this be why the site I’ve made looks so big to them and why the site they made looks so small to me?
The “Best for Retina display” option is a 1440x900 resolution. Setting your display to that (or as near to that as possible) when you’re working on their site will allow you to see through their eyes.
The “Best for Retina display” option is a 1440x900 resolution. Setting
your display to that (or as near to that as possible) when you’re working
on their site will allow you to see through their eyes.
Thanks Joe.
Are there any thoughts to this? It seems like IE8 all over, designing for a
subset that sees the web differently than most everyone else…
On 27 Sep 2013, at 11:54, Ernie Simpson email@hidden wrote:
It seems like IE8 all over, designing for a subset that sees the web differently than most everyone else…
Retina is a red-herring here – it’s just the same old resolution issue we’ve always had to deal with. Things on a Retina display at 1440 x 900 resolution are exactly the same physical size as things on a regular display at the same display resolution. The difference here is that your resolution (1920 x 1200?) is going to make things appear physically smaller.
I don’t think there’s a catch-all solution, unfortunately, so you may need to meet them somewhere in the middle. An important thing to do is make your client aware that not everyone sees the site the same way they do. Show them the stats, which will probably show about a 50/50 divide, depending on the audience, and argue your point if need be. There’s a strong argument for desktop bound text and images to be made larger due to the distance users are form the screen. The closer you get (tv → desktop → tablet – > mobile) the smaller the content needs to be.