Legacy Media Queries and Device Pixel Ratio - css

Will standard media queries such as:
#media only screen and (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 820px) {}
work on a device that is retina display?
I have read many articles on this, but most are about specifying the retina display css rather than how standard media queries developed for 96 dpi (the original size) will look on devices that have 300 dpi (retina display).
The main assurance I am looking for is: besides not taking full advantage of the quality being offered by the device, will the layout look the same if it was a 96dpi screen or 300dpi for example?
Much obliged for any help!

CSS pixel is not hardware pixel. This ARTICLE explains the difference.
#media only screen and (min-device-width: 768px) and (max-device-width: 1024px)
Absent references to pixel density, it will target CSS styles to any iPad, with or without a Retina display, because it’s referring to CSS pixels, and in those terms the two are the same.

Related

CSS media query for the Google Pixel phones?

Can someone tell me the width and height in px (as used by CSS in mobile mode) for the Pixel and Pixel LG?
Surprised that the Pixels do not yet appear as options in Chrome's emulator! Note that I'm not asking for the tech specs that can be found on the Pixel website.
The specs for the Google Pixel are :
1140px x 2560px
441dp x 731dp
16:9 ratio
If you want to target it with media queries:
#media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.77) and (orientation:landscape) // or (orientation:portrait) {}
Works for me, but it also reach other mobiles like the recent Galaxy's.

About responsive sites, pixels, and density

I have coded a responsive website, in which I have CSS media queries to detect the screen size(pixels) of the device the user is navigating with.
Just standard medias. Example:
#media (max-width: 1199px){
/*code*/
}
#media (max-width: 991px){
/*code*/
}
#media (max-width: 767px){
/*code*/
}
When I test my website with my mobile, which is a Samsung Galaxy S4 with 1920x1080 pixels my website shows me the mobile version, which is in this case the #media query with a max-width of 767px.
I understand that most things would be too small to read or be seen if my mobile respected exact measures like 12px font size.
So my question is, how do I control which version of my website is shown on high resolution devices, because pixels media queries aren't working in my case.
#media (max-width: 1199px){
/*code*/
}
The max-width property in the media query works a little different. It is not the resolution of the screen. It is equivalent css pixel.
Here are a couple of articles.
A pixel identity crisis.
A pixel is not a pixel is not a pixel.
moz media query page.
If you want to target device resolution you should use
#media all and (max-device-width: 320px) {
}.
max-device-width:This property measures the device-width. If you write css using media query using this it will get a little complex (mobiles tabs and even desktops can have 1080p resolution screens). In order to target device resolutions you might have to look into properties like -device-pixel-ratio , orientation and device-height to give better control of layouts
The problem might be that you didn't include a viewport meta-tag
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">

Is there some "best approach" for responsive design?

I need to do a respponsive website project and Im with some doubts.
Im studying media queries but there are a lot of media queries, there are something like "default media queries" or "common media queries" that we can follow?
After some research Im thinking something about this:
#media only screen and (min-width: 480px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 600px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 768px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 992px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 1382px) { ... }
Do you think that are a good approach using this media queries?
And do for responsiv design do you think its better use percentages in css or its better using pixels? Im asking this, because the media queries use pixels, so maybe its better dont use percentages?
And for last, I have a computer with full hd resolution and other with 1024 resolution. I have a image that have 300 pixels, in my full hd monitor the image is more smaller than my 1024 computer. I dont understand this, because 300pixels should be 300 pixels always no?
Sorry if I ask many things, but Im with some doubts and its not easy find good and reliable information about this!
I thnk using the media query settings you note will complicate your life because they will make it difficult to target different viewports or window widths.
#media only screen and (min-width: 480px) { ... } will target all widths 480px and above,
#media only screen and (min-width: 600px) { ... } will target all widths 600px and above.
So they will both be fighting for control whenever the viewport is 600px or higher. You could consider something like the following:
/* your default, site-wide settings followed by */
#media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 600px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 601px) and (max-width: 768px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 992px) { ... }
#media only screen and (min-width: 993px) { ... }
I'm not saying that these are perfect break points, that's often specific to your design. The important bit is the technique you use to target the different viewports.
There are different schools of thought for pixels vs percentages, and both have advantages. If you are getting up-to-speed with responsive design, personally I think it's worth spending time with some of the well established frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation or Skeleton or one of the many others.
They are all fantastic, they will save you heaps of learning time, give you good cross-browser results, and the more you know, the easier it will be to break away from them when needed.
Good luck!
What's pixel density and how it can help me to understand why the same image can be smaller on my mobile phone than it is on my computer monitor (and vice-versa)?
Let's say that I have a monitor with a 500 x 500 pixels resolution, the screen size of this monitor is 15" diagonally and I have a mobile phone that has the same resolution but it's screen size is 4" diagonally (just an example).
How is it possible to fit the same number of pixels in different screen sizes?
The answer is simple: The pixel is smaller on my phone than it is on my monitor (that's the big difference between Apple's retina display and other displays).
Media Queries...
Take a look in a very simple blog that I've developed last year. Try resizing your browser width to see what happens to the content, images and slideshow.
When the browser/screen width is smaller than 800 pixels, the entire site changes to adapt itself better to smaller screens. This is how I think you should use media queries, instead of creating rules for each device screen size (but not necessarily using 800px nor limiting the content max-width when it's on a big screen).
Note that this is just an example on how you should think about media queries.
here is some reference for you:
about media queries you can read http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/post/7-habits-of-highly-effective-media-queries/ - i love this quote
Start with the small screen first, then expand until it looks like
shit. Time for a breakpoint! -Stephen Hay
basically you should use a fluid layout (you can choose from a variety of css fluid grids you find online) and test your design enlarging and shrinking your browser: when your design "cracks", it's time to add a mediaquery. you don't have readapt the whole website at a certain breakpoint: everything may work ok and you need only to resize the text at that certain width. do so.
about pixel density and resolutionyou can read this useful article: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/04/a_pixel_is_not.html
hope this helps
You should probably stop thinking about the web in pixels and screen sizes.
I can see why it's tempting to use actual device widths as breakpoints for a design, but do keep in mind that those breakpoints will be invalid the very second a new device is released. Or when the user interacts with the site in an unexpected way, such as resizing the text size to their preference.
Use the em unit for your breakpoints. This way, your media queries will trigger correctly even when a user resizes the text size.
Adjust your breakpoints to when your content/layout needs it, not for for specific screen sizes (that said, you should probably not include compact (mobile) navigation above 980-ish pixels, since people with old monitors probably won't understand how to navigate through it).
Write mobile first CSS, as in use min-width for your media queries. This helps you keep your CSS DRY. However that does not mean that you never should use max-width for media queries - there are always scenarios when you want to add styles to smaller screens only. Always avoid repetition.
For your own sanity, use a CSS preprocessor such as SASS, LESS or Stylus. I recently wrote an answer on how to use SASS to get a really comfortable workflow with media queries, click here here to read it.
Pixel density is a complicated topic, but rendered pixels (such as an image, or anything with CSS) aren't the same as actual pixels on a screen - they're normalized to a standard. For that reason, you shouldn't use pixel density to increase the quality of images, you should just increase the width of the image since those additional pixels then will be crammed into place on higher resolution screens.
Pleas Try Following media queries:-
/* Large desktop */
#media (min-width: 1200px) { ... }
/* Portrait tablet to landscape and desktop */
#media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 979px) { ... }
/* Landscape phone to portrait tablet */
#media (max-width: 767px) { ... }
/* Landscape phones and down */
#media (max-width: 480px) { ... }

CSS: I always seem to need multiple identical media queries

So I always seem to do two identical media queries for smartphones, one being the min- or max-width, and the other being the min- or max-DEVICE-width (to target the iPhone and stuff)...
#media only screen
and (min-device-width : 320px)
and (max-device-width : 480px){
// Some awesome phone-specific CSS
}
#media only screen
and (min-width : 320px)
and (max-width : 480px){
// THE SAME awesome phone-specific CSS as above
}
Now I can't help but feel as though this is not the most efficient way to do things... Especially if I'm moving a lot of stuff around/restyling my site/application to be phone specific. Also especially when I have to do two more for the tablet sizes.
Now do I really need both? Does it matter and what exactly is the difference?
The difference between width and device-width can be a bit unclear. I'll try to explain.
device-width refers to the width of the device itself, in other words, the screen resolution of the device. Lets say your screen's resolution is 1280x800. This means the screen is 1280 pixels across, so it has a device-width of 1280 pixels.
In contrast, width refers to the width of your browser's viewport size.
In most cases width is more versatile when it comes to creating responsive webpages (and it is the method I would recommend you'd use), though device-width could be useful when you wish to specifically target mobile devices (and not desktops with a very small browser window).
DEVICE width will target only DEVICES and not desktops, u wouldnt hv any desktop/laptop of width 320x480, so u can use DEVICE width.
You could probably just use max-width: 767px this way you would target everything below an iPad.
I would also just specify dynamic widths so you don't have to differentiate between single devices.

Ensuring monitor does not pick up #media query for mobile

I've built a nice template that has four different layouts using #media queries:
850+px width
<850px width
iphone landscape
iphone portrait
It works awesome, until you size your monitor window down to below 480px (iphone landscape) and then it starts picking up the smaller size #media queries.
Is there any way to avoid this?
I personally feel like it's desirable to display the "iPhone" layout at smaller browser window sizes, as your content has likely been optimized for that layout, HOWEVER, if you really want to prevent this you can play around with the device-width property in your #media declaration. Something like #media only screen and (max-device-width: 720px) { ... } will target device width rather than viewport width. Compare the behavior of this (viewport width) vs this (device width). Play around with the values (change min to max, change the pixel sizes, etc.) and observe the behavior. Also, don't forget that you can combine #media rules, e.g. #media (min-width: 400px) and (max-width: 600px) { ... }. See what works for you.
The problem with this method is that mobile devices come in all shapes and sizes, so you might be serving undesirable styles on a different mobile device (let's just say an Android phone...) that you hadn't planned on. However, depending on your needs, this might not matter to you.
Here is a list of example media queries and sizes to guide you, if you do decide to go this route: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/media-queries-for-standard-devices/ (sorry for the lack of a working link; apparently I'm not cool enough on StackOverflow to post multiple links yet)...

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