Taking my arguments about pixels being relative another step, the CSS pixel sizes that device makers use actually tell us the distance away from your eye that they think you should hold a device. Applying a bit of maths lets us work out what that distance is.

Daniel Davis posted a simple survey of screen sizes which jogged my memory and I thought I would add some more data. I looked at the Google Analytics (GA) for a site I have access to with traffic in the low millions per month, and took a sample of that for December.

The recent ‘vexing viewports‘ article on Alistapart is a call on device manufacturers to choose a reasonable CSS-pixel resolution for each device so that responsive design works. This is something I totally agree with and support, but I’m not sure the iPad mini example they use is as clear it seems.

I keep reading recommendations for using EMs or other typographical units for layout, which I still don’t understand. At best it is an extra layer of abstraction, at worst it is misleading and likely to cause more issues than it solves. I will try to demonstrate why pixels are the best relative unit.

Layout methods in web design have gone through a transition in the last few years, unfortunately we’re still using floats a lot, but flexible layouts have made a comeback in the form of responsive design – which is great. Recently though, I have been puzzled by people suggesting that we should use EMs for layout…

I came across a situation recently where a JavaScript widget didn’t ‘work’ on the iPhone. It did technically work, but without knowing about two-fingered scrolling (and when you need to use it), it didn’t appear to work. So how do you differentiate the iPhone (and other touch based devices) from a regular browser?

I’ve just gotten back from a great day at the Stackoverflow Dev Day, I didn’t take my usual copious notes, but I thought a flavour of proceedings would be good to get down. For those who don’t know me, I have to add the caveat that I’m not a …

The new iPod nanos (4th generation) now have speech-enabled menus, so you don’t have to be able to see the screen to operate it. This is obviously a boon for the visualy impaired, but with my old iPod I quite often used it from my pocket, or whilst driving. Could …

I’m not sure whether to put this down to an issue with my (mobile) ISP, or whether it should count against using XHTML sent as application/xhtml+xml? I’ve recently found that even a well authored site using valid XHTML can display as an XML error in browsers that support XML mime types.

I’ve recently moved to using GMail as my primary interface, and I noticed a new mobile feature. The mobile access for GMail is much better than the one I installed on my hosting, which frankly was unusable on my phone despite an excellent mobile browser. Then I tried the Symbian GMail client.