[dextorious]

Unfortunately we can't.

Maybe for copy text it's ok, but not for other page elements, ones that we want to align in a specific way to bitmap images, no.

The page-zoom style resizing is our best bet --it's the "resolution independent" way to have your pixels and eat them too.

Now, if we could provide bitmap assets that could be zoomed in the same way, instead of just showing bigger but more pixelated (as we can in application icons in OS X), we would be done.

[wladimir]

Now, if we could provide bitmap assets that could be zoomed in the same way

The most common way (used for icons) is to provide multiple bitmaps and load the right one depending on screen DPI. You can do this on your site too.

And there's of course vector graphics (SVG), if you don't mind some extra processing on the client for rendering...

[dextorious]

Yes, you could provide multiple bitmaps in a website now, but in a convoluted way (with some custom javascript checking for resize events etc). In the icons case, it happens automatically.

As for SVG, client rendering time would be insignificant for most case (for a desktop machine at least, they have CPU to spare). But currently used IE version (> 6) for one don't support SVG. And the main problem are bitmap assets such as photographs. Those cannot be done as vectors.

[wladimir]

Sure... I didn't say that it would happen automatically, just that it could be done. Everything done on the web is convoluted.

Btw: why would you have to watch resize events? Changing the size of the browser window (even rotating the screen/phone) doesn't change the DPI.

[dextorious]

My bad, I meant resize as in zoom-in out (Ctrl +-) of the page in general, not the $(window).resize().