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.
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.
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.