14 DAY TRIAL // Retina displays are far from becoming a common sight. The iPad has one and some Android tablets would qualify, but on the desktop front, just one MacBook model has a high-resolution and HiDPI display that would qualify as "Retina." Things will change in the coming years though and it's nice to see that both apps and, more importantly, websites are taking notice.
A Chrome version sporting a Retina UI has just shipped in the stable channel. But the major problem, as we noted at the time, is that, while the browsers may be ready, the web surely isn't.
But if WordPress is any indication, websites won't waste too much time upgrading to the HiDPI world. WordPress.com has rolled out a brand new UI for the dashboard, the home page and all of its sites that features twice as crisp graphics, meaning four times larger images.
This meant having to redraw most of the graphic resources but it was worth it, the new buttons look very, very sharp, if you have the display to take advantage of them, that is. Everything has gotten an upgrade, from the dashboard buttons to the logo and the fonts.
"There’s a new generation of devices really changing how we look at the web, Apple calls it Retina, others call it HiDPI (high dots per inch), but it’s been trickling its way up mostly through mobile phones and then in tablets with the iPad 3," Automattic's Matt Mullenweg wrote.
"You may have noticed that we’ve been going bit by bit through the entire WordPress dashboard, the reader, and all of our sites updating them to take advantage of this new capability, often crafting new icons and graphics by hand," he explained.
But it's not just the official sites that are getting an upgrade, all blogs hosted by WordPress.com benefit as well. For example, images in posts will now be served at double the resolution, providing the original photos uploaded to WordPress.com or hosted elsewhere are that large. This means that images on your blog will look extra crisp on Retina displays. Gravatars are getting the same treatment.