Responsive Web Design With Physical Units

This post should be titled “Getting Ahead of Yourself.” “…By a Few Years,” actually. Here’s the deal: at the time I’m writing this, early 2013, there’s no way to accurately design for the Web using physical units, nor will there be for a very long time. But there is a way to design while knowing the physical characteristics of the device — or, at least, there will be in the very near future.

It’s called the “resolution media query”, and it’s been in the specification for media queries for some time. However, while it has been in the spec, that doesn’t mean anyone has actually implemented it yet. Fortunately, WebKit is leading the way and pushing for this feature to be implemented. So, how will we use this nifty little feature, exactly? Here’s how.