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Firefox 18 Gets Support for Retina Display

59 points| twapi | 13 years ago |browserfame.com

55 comments

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[+] phoboslab|13 years ago|reply
Can anyone with a retina display and the Firefox nightly check this test case for Canvas, please: http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/backingstore/

I hope they didn't screw it up as bad as Apple did with Safari: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/drawing-pixels-is-hard

Edit: judging from some comments in the source, the Canvas element still uses a low resolution, so the test case should work as expected in any case.

[+] tathagata|13 years ago|reply
I just tested this and unfortunately the test case doesn't pass on the nightly. I am seeing (252,40,252) instead of the (255,0,255).
[+] paulrouget|13 years ago|reply
Retina support is not in Nightly yet. But very very soon (if not today, tomorrow).
[+] akurilin|13 years ago|reply
I wonder at what kind of resolution we will no longer need anti-aliasing. Did they provide any Retina screenshots with AA off? You'd think that with small enough of a pixel it would no longer be necessary.
[+] Retric|13 years ago|reply
There is no clear cut answer to that. Even at 10,000ppi you can still get visual artifacts without anti-aliasing. The problem is pixles are averaging a single point source over a 'full' pixel so with some patterns they can become vary sensitive to slight motions. Think chain link fence, all the pixels could be on the fence and it looks solid, or between them and it looks clear, and if your rotation it can swap between them.
[+] tathagata|13 years ago|reply
Not there yet. I turned off AA in the Terminal and it looks smooth, but not completely. If I use a lower scaled resolution like 1440x900, then it looks even smoother, but again not completely smooth. So I guess an even higher dpi is needed. It would be interesting to see non-antialiased fonts on the iPhone which has a much higher dpi.
[+] cpach|13 years ago|reply
I think I managed to downvote you by mistake. Sorry…
[+] listic|13 years ago|reply
What is there in a higher-resolution display that actually needs software support from Mozilla?
[+] keeperofdakeys|13 years ago|reply
Applications need to be 'retina aware' to actually get the full resolution, otherwise they are told the resolution is 1440x900 (this doesn't include fonts, and other system-rendered features, which the OS can always render at full resolution). The program icons also need to be shipped in a higher resolution.
[+] cmelbye|13 years ago|reply
More pixels..? Apps that aren't updated are pixel doubled, so images, and in some cases text, are jaggy and blurry until they're updated.
[+] cheald|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure, but the entire application looks pixelated and blurry, like it's rendered at half-size and scaled up. It's really bizarre.
[+] asadotzler|13 years ago|reply
Apple does something called pixel doubling. If an application takes no action, it won't just be rendered smaller. Instead, Apple zooms the whole app, causing everything to get very fuzzy.
[+] chmars|13 years ago|reply
OT: When does HN upgrade it's voting arrows for Retina displays?
[+] chrisdroukas|13 years ago|reply
Preferably it would be CSS.

   .upArrow {
   width: 0; 
   height: 0; 
   border-left: 6px solid transparent;
   border-right: 6px solid transparent;
   border-bottom: 6px solid #828282;
   }
[+] navs|13 years ago|reply
So do Retina apps mean we now have to deal with larger software packages, even if we don't have retina displays?
[+] chmars|13 years ago|reply
I guess so, same as on iOS devices. The example of iOS, however, shows that Retina will become the standard sooner or later … :)
[+] lawnchair_larry|13 years ago|reply
I'm confused about this. I've been running the sept 11 Nightly and it has retina support. Did they take it out, and this is just about re-adding it?

Prior to that I used the "retinizer" app and the about:config hack to disable acceleration, but performance was really bad. Since running nightly, it has been fully retina enabled and smooth.

[+] cheald|13 years ago|reply
About frickin' time. Firefox looks horrible on retina Macbooks right now, to the point that it's unusable.
[+] teilo|13 years ago|reply
Relative term, and totally subjective. I have an rMBP, and use Firefox (as well as InDesign) all the time, and it's not horrible. If your entire screen looked that way, you wouldn't even notice.
[+] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
This is fabulous, now if I could get it for the iPad, tell it to lie about what kind of device I was so that I would not be stuck with the 'mobile' version of Gmail. That would be a usability win.
[+] eurleif|13 years ago|reply
Gmail's mobile version has links at the bottom: 'View Gmail in: Mobile | Older version | desktop'
[+] Aardwolf|13 years ago|reply
Why do you need "support" for a screen resolution? PC's have had different screen resolutions forever, why were there never news articles about "Firefox Gets Support For 1280x1024" or "Firefox Gets Support For 1920x1200"?
[+] ringm|13 years ago|reply
1920x1200 does not equal high dpi. Think 1920x1200 on a 10" display. If your app runs on a high DPI screen, and the OS and your app has no support for this, all fonts and UI elements become tiny, which is unacceptable.

Windows XP had abysmal support for high DPI which usually resulted in broken UI layout. Vista introduced "DPI virtualization" requiring you to declare and provide explicit support for variable dpi in your application. Otherwise it is run at 96 DPI and raster scaling is applied. This prevents any UI layout issues but results in a a blurry image. I guess Apple uses the same approach: if your app has no explicit support, it runs under raster scaling.

[+] mh-|13 years ago|reply
yeah, no. Just downloaded it.

http://i.imgur.com/pbGvv.png

whole thing looks like this.

[+] yottabyte47|13 years ago|reply
Firefox is at v18? Last I knew it was at v5. Guess they didn't waste any time in their quest to catch up with Chrome.
[+] melling|13 years ago|reply
No, Firefox is at v15. v16 will be released on Oct 9th. Personally, I just run the Nightly (http://nightly.mozilla.org/) and get an update every day. It's simply "today's build."

The version number is meaningless. What is meaningful, however, is getting millions of people to help test beta browsers. If Chrome is your browser of choice then help test the Canary builds (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs)

[+] azakai|13 years ago|reply
That joke never gets old, let's keep saying it every time a Chrome or Firefox version comes out! (Or like here, just because a Chrome or Firefox version number was mentioned in a random article.)