Pixels and Image resolution

Resolution

Different Resolutions of an image

Most references to resolution are in the form of dots per inch or pixels per inch. The accurate description for pixels per inch would be Pixel Density. Pixel is short for pixel element (Pix stands for picture and el stands for element). With films, pixels are rectangular and with stills, you get square pixels. Really, all pixels are are coloured squares (or black and white pixels if the image or film has no colour).

As for resolution, a computer screen would typically have 72 PPI (Pixels Per Inch) and for printed images, they usually have 300 PPI. For game developers developing for mobile platforms, knowing the resolution for the mobile device they are working on is crucial. As they would be developing the game on a computer, they would need to render it in a lower resolution for the mobile device as the computer screen has a much larger resolution than a mobile screen. A resolution of 420 x 360 would have 420 PPI horizontally and 360 PPI vertically.

Bits

Bit is short for Binary Digit. It is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications.
The first mention of the term "bit" was written by John W. Tukey on a bells labs memo on January 9 1947 in which he contracted "binary digit" to "bit" thus creating the term "bit".

Bits have two possible values:

0 or 1, yes or no

+ or -, true or false

In popular culture, the Tron chartacter, Bit was based off a real bit. And it could only respond yes or no, or true or false just like the values of a bit.

Bytes
A byte is a group of 8 bits. Back in the day, 4 bits were often reffered to as a nibble. However, this term is no longer needed as technology has become much more powerful since 4 bit hardware like the Atari 2600. Linking consoles to bits, consoles are always constrained to the amount of bits they can hold (e.g. SNES- 16 Bits, Sega Dreamcast- 128 bits).



Binary Codes

Basically, a binary code is the language the PC uses. It is a coding system using the two binary digits 0 and 1 to represent a letter, digit, or other character in a computer or electronic device.