Do web designers ‘need’ a Retina Display for creating websites?

Apple has made Retina Display for creating websites a very common conceptual term these days. Basically it describes screens that come with resolutions more than 300 pixels/ inch. Such ultra high resolution screens have greatly transformed the experience people have while using the web. In fact, Retina Display offers additional 3 million pixels compared to an average HDTV device. However, many experts are now questioning whether such high resolution screens will help web designers to come up with better quality results or whether they will have their fair share of disadvantages. It is therefore time to have a closer look at the Retina Display screens and examine whether they are going to help web designers create better quality websites or not.

Any average layman can immediately see that Retina Display certainly brings a number of positive outcomes to the table. For instance, the large resolution of these screens can give rise to larger looking images and crisper fonts. They are going to enhance image clarity to a greater extent, allowing for greater extent of sharpness and detail. The reason for this is that with traditional display screens, image resizing often becomes a necessity which invariably damages their quality to some extent. The modern cameras that are used nowadays allow in coming up with images that have more than 5000px. This makes it necessary for the web designers to resize the images to fit the standard web resolutions. However, with the help of Retina Display technology, the monitors can now display these images much closer to their original resolutions.

However, the most important challenge that Retina Display technology poses for the web designers is that their creation have enhanced the distinction between old and new technology. Web designers are always looking for the best possible ways to come up with sites that offer maximum positive user experience. It is therefore necessary and important not to alienate a certain segment of users who still rely on older technology just because some people have adopted to use the new Retina Display technology. Traditionally, web technologies have often given way to new advancements even though there have been insufficient browser support for the new technology. This has often made it difficult for the web designers to create sites that perform well in all browsers. Web designers can either make sites that conform to older technologies or the newer ones, thus alienating one group or the other.

One of the significant benefits of larger resolution screens is that it allows web designers to make use of images with larger sizes. However, this can naturally increase the loading time for the websites. Most websites use images with lower sizes and lower quality to aid in faster loading. This is crucial to ensure smooth loading with the minimum amount of data. Unless the pages load quickly, it will only amount to poor user experience which will only reduce visitors for a site. This can also have a negative impact in terms of SEO and bring down the overall chances of success for the website.

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