Tags: pixels

Config 2024: In defense of an old pixel (Marcin Wichary, Director of Design, Figma) - YouTube

Everyone’s raving about this great talk by Marcin, and rightly so!

No To Spy Pixels

Almost no-one has given informed constent to being tracked through spy pixels in emails, and yet the practice is endemic. This is wrong. It needs to change.

Why you should never use px to set font-size in CSS - Josh Collinsworth blog

Reminder:

em and rem work with the user’s font size; px completely overrides it.

Body Margin 8px | Miriam Eric Suzanne

I love this kind of spelunking into the history of why things are they way they are on the web!

Here, Detective Chief Inspector Suzanne tries to get to the bottom of why every browser has eight pixels of margin applied to the body element in the user-agent stylesheet.

MailTrackerBlocker

I use Apple’s Mail app for my email so this is very handy:

An email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail.

Breaking the physical limits of fonts

This broke my brain.

The challenge: in the fewest resources possible, render meaningful text.

• How small can a font really go?
• How many bytes of memory would you need (to store it and run it?)
• How much code would it take to express it?

Lets see just how far we can take this!

Unraveling The JPEG

A deep, deep, deep dive into the JPEG format. Best of all, it’s got interactive explanations you can tinker with, a la Nicky Case or Bret Victor.

Pixels vs. Ems: Users DO Change Font Size – Evan Minto – Medium

I have to admit, I didn’t realise that text reszing behaved differently for user preferences compared to page zoom. For that reason alone, I’m going to avoid setting font sizes in pixels.

If 2 to 3% (or more!) of your users are relying on a custom font size, you should know that so you can either support that user preference or make a conscious decision to not support it. Doing anything less is frankly irresponsible, especially considering that users with larger font sizes may be using those sizes to compensate for visual disabilities.

PX, EM or REM Media Queries? by Zell Liew

Just recently on a Clearleft project, some of us were discussing whether there was a reason not to use rems instead of ems for media queries. Apart from one older browser implementation difference, we couldn’t come up with much.

Some in-depth research here supports the use of em values for media queries. Very good to know.

Retina revolution

You’ve probably seen this already, but it’s really worth bearing in mind: when you’re scaling up JPGs for retina display you can safely reduce the image quality by quite a lot—to the point of getting the exact same file size as a higher quality image that’s half the size.

[this is aaronland] “an index of reality”

Aaron should definitely skyblog more often if this is the result.

June is about to draw to close and I’ve spent the entire month within the borders of the UK. That’s quite a change from the previous month: I was at three different conferences in three different countries in May.

First off, there was Mobilism in Amsterdam. It was, unsurprisingly, very good indeed. Mind you, I was getting a little disheartened on the first day of the conference when there was talk after talk describing how to make web apps look and feel more like native apps. The question of why exactly this would be desirable never seemed to get asked. I was beginning to worry that we were going to enter a period of making the same mistakes we did a few years back when everyone was trying to slavishly imitate desktop interactions on the web. The result is a kind of uncanny valley of interaction where apps behave almost, but not quite, like their native counterparts.

My fears were allayed on the second day of Mobilism though, particularly when Scott blew everyone’s minds. There was a veritable feast of future friendly thinking from Lyza, Jason, Brad, and Stephen too.

Speaking of future friendliness, there was a second Mobilewood gathering recently and the Future Friendly site now sports a new section entitled Come Aboard.

By the way, thank you to everyone who provided questions for my panels at Mobilism. They went well, although in retrospect two panels were maybe a bit much. Still, it was fun trying to get a statement other than “no comment” out of the Google Chrome representative on the browser panel.

Later in May I was in Belgium for Multi-Mania, a grassroots event run by students. I enjoyed myself but there was definitely a problem with having multiple tracks—the usual feeling of missing out on something, especially when some of the rooms filled up really quickly. The main stage also suffered from being directly connected to the exhibition hall which meant there was a lot of sound leakage. A shame, really.

My last speaking gig in May, on the hand, was a very smoothly-run event. I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland for Go Beyond Pixels. The fact that the conference was really well put together is all the more surprising considering it was the first time that Levin had ever organised an event! I hope it won’t be the last. He put on a great show and gave all the speakers a very warm welcome.

Oh, and Newfoundland was beautiful.

Since getting back, I’ve been enduring the English Summer. As nice as Brighton has been for a month, I’m looking forward to getting to sunnier climes.

So that’s exactly what I’m going to do, starting with a trip to Barcelona in just over a week’s time for Webvisions. I’ll be doing a half-day workshop on responsive design and progressive enhancement.

If you’re thinking of coming, here’s a little tip: go to the registration page, scroll down to the bit where it says “enter promotional code”, click that link, type “KEITH”, and hit the “Apply” button …Boom! Now your conference and workshop pass has a 20% discount applied.

Alas, I won’t be able to stick around for the conference day itself. I need to get over to Austin for An Event Apart.

I’m very excited to get to Austin when it’s not South by Southwest, but I’m also extremely nervous about my talk. I’ve spent most of this month at home trying to finish up my presentation. I fear I may be trying to squeeze an awful lot of stuff into one talk. I might have to speak very fast to fit it all in …or I suppose I could be sensible and try to trim the presentation down.

Anyway, there are still some tickets available for AEA Austin if you want to see me sweat …and I’m not just talking about the Texas heat.

Goldilocks and the Three Device Pixel Ratios [Legends of the Sun Pig - Martin Sutherland’s Blog]

A great examination of the default settings for pixel density and how it can effect reported device width values on mobile.

Points mean Pixels - 8th May 2012 at The Skiff, Brighton

This looks like being a fun little local event ‘round at the Skiff in May.

8 BIT WOOD | serving all your wooden pixel needs

We need to make sure that Shaun Inman never discovers this site.

QuirksBlog: A pixel is not a pixel is not a pixel

A clear explanation of device-width from PPK.

Grid Calculator

A handy tool for calculating grid and gutter widths although you'll still have to some calculating to get the figures to work in percentages (assuming you're designing for the Web).