Windows 8 supports Retina-class displays

All the talk these days is of the new iPad and its magical screen. Apple isn’t the only one who can do that, you know. In fact, most display makers are looking forward to post-HD resolutions as one of the big selling points of the next generation of displays. Other tablets are already approaching iPad levels of pixel density and it would be foolish of the likes of Google and Microsoft not to be planning for it.

Fortunately, Microsoft is well aware of the trend and has plans in place for dealing with pixel-dense displays (or “Retina” to the vulgar).

The specifics are laid out with no quarter given to laymen in this post at Building Windows 8. The gist is that they have analyzed the expected range of display sizes and resolutions, and have identified a sort of “Goldilocks Zone” for the three general classes of resolutions: standard, HD, and quad-XGA (2560×1440). Inside this zone, text and UI elements aren’t blown up to cartoonish proportions or shrunk down to a size that’s frustrating to touch.

Microsoft have come up with the following

    * In the first case (Standard), buttons and text will be shown with no scaling.
    * In the second case (HD), they’ll be 140% normal size (i.e. elements 100 pixels wide will become 140),
    * For the third case (Quad-XGA) they’ll be blown up by 180%.

There is an alternative solution which is known as “independent continual resize” and that would render every button and character the same size regardless of the size or resolution of the display. However the way that we currently store and render text means that this advanced solution just isn’t possible at this point in time. Perhaps in the future it will be possible but for now it isn’t practical.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the different resolutions can change the way the user will view an app dramatically, which is why it’s so tricky scaling and re-sizing programs for different displays.

Because of the increasing size of resolutions, it’s starting to make traditional UI features like drop down menus cumbersome and unpractical. They end up being far too small to use accurately with touch. That’s why Microsoft have brought in an array of touch gestures with Windows 8 to try alleviate this problem.

Microsoft talk in great detail about this issue and how they’ve worked hard developing good solutions for Windows 8 over on their blog, so if you’re interested in going into more technical details feel free to check it out.