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Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

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Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#81

Post by [deleted] »

dahfizz wrote: post #59
timw4mail wrote: post #15

The real problem is that designing for different screen sizes, especially with responsive design, is very difficult. For my personal projects, screen size is the factor used to determine layout. Mobile/tablet/laptop/desktop is irrelevant. My goal with smaller viewports is to make the layout as similar as possible, without the user having to scroll horizontally. Because I don't want to change the layout too much, I do…

The real real problem is that so many sites overcomplicate their design. HN works beautifully on any window / screen size.

[deleted]

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#82

Post by Wowfunhappy »

tyingq wrote: post #78
jefftk wrote: post #48

Sites are not detecting a portrait screen and deciding that they're displaying on a phone. Someone who switches their monitor to portrait, or resizes a window to be taller than it is wide, is still going to get the desktop view. In this case the author is scaling their resolution, and so their browser is presenting itself to sites as 720px wide. Sites see that and show a layout optimized for a screen of that width. T…

The example of https://www.just-eat.co.uk/ bailing out to a hamburger menu at 768px, just to deal with 5 navigation options is a bit much.

As it happens though, with the navigation design they chose, the entries wouldn't fit at that width.

They certainly could have added an extra breakpoint where the navigation becomes smaller before bailing to a hamburger, but of course that does add complexity.

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#83

Post by ChrisRR »

As with every engineering project, there's always a point where you have to look at how few people are within a certain use case and decide it's not worth the effort to cater for them

As a vertical PC user, you're in the vast minority, and you can't really be surprised that people don't want to spend the extra time (and money) developing to support your edge case

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#84

Post by stronglikedan »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #80
jefftk wrote: post #48

Sites are not detecting a portrait screen and deciding that they're displaying on a phone. Someone who switches their monitor to portrait, or resizes a window to be taller than it is wide, is still going to get the desktop view. In this case the author is scaling their resolution, and so their browser is presenting itself to sites as 720px wide. Sites see that and show a layout optimized for a screen of that width. T…

This doesn't address the author's central argument, which is that websites need an effortless way of letting fonts become bigger without affecting the entire layout. I've wanted it too. I don't really care if some text gets cut off on headers and looks weird, I just want to read stuff from the comfort of my bed with my laptop a few feet away.

I love that Chrome on Android lets me zoom into any content on any site, regardless of how bad the devs borked the UX. (Yes, devs, if you don't allow me to zoom using the browser's built-in capabilities, you have borked the UX, and should be ashamed of yourselves.)

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#85

Post by superkuh »

In the past I'd respond: just because I have javascript disabled doesn’t mean I’m on a phone. But unfortunately developers have dropped supporting HTML completely for even older cell phones. There's no more mobile.twitter.com that serves HTML for example.

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#86

Post by ur-whale »

jefftk wrote: post #48

Sites are not detecting a portrait screen and deciding that they're displaying on a phone. Someone who switches their monitor to portrait, or resizes a window to be taller than it is wide, is still going to get the desktop view. In this case the author is scaling their resolution, and so their browser is presenting itself to sites as 720px wide. Sites see that and show a layout optimized for a screen of that width. T…

>Someone who switches their monitor to portrait, or resizes a window to be taller than it is wide, is still going to get the desktop view.

My experience has been the exact opposite of what you're saying.

And the result is, 90% of the time, a site that goes from usable to unusable.

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#87

Post by majewsky »

Spooks wrote: post #68
dahfizz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real real problem is that so many sites overcomplicate their design. HN works beautifully on any window / screen size.

HN is a pretty minimal site though - it is just a message board.

A message board like HN is more difficult than you think to get right across a wide range of screen sizes, just because comments can nest many levels deep. HN arguably has problems of its own in that regard.

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#88

Post by KLexpat »

stronglikedan wrote: post #84
sillysaurusx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't address the author's central argument, which is that websites need an effortless way of letting fonts become bigger without affecting the entire layout. I've wanted it too. I don't really care if some text gets cut off on headers and looks weird, I just want to read stuff from the comfort of my bed with my laptop a few feet away.

I love that Chrome on Android lets me zoom into any content on any site, regardless of how bad the devs borked the UX. (Yes, devs, if you don't allow me to zoom using the browser's built-in capabilities, you have borked the UX, and should be ashamed of yourselves.)

If you have a windows 10 laptop, pinching on the touchpad seems to give you the same zoom functionality now. vastly superior than the one built into the browser

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#89

Post by nobleach »

jefftk wrote: post #48

Sites are not detecting a portrait screen and deciding that they're displaying on a phone. Someone who switches their monitor to portrait, or resizes a window to be taller than it is wide, is still going to get the desktop view. In this case the author is scaling their resolution, and so their browser is presenting itself to sites as 720px wide. Sites see that and show a layout optimized for a screen of that width. T…

Yes, and webdevs have been trying for over 10 years now to figure out how to get this right. Has no one just stopped to consider having a browser send a `prefersMobileView` or `viewport:phone` or anything like that? I can remember back a few years ago, an iPhone 6+, turned sideways could get a desktop view on some sites... simply because it met the requirements set by the author. Now, the author's assumptions were wrong of course, but all we have to go on, is literally guesswork. We're told constantly NOT to use user-agent strings, but honestly, it's like we really need something to key off of. I know the A List Apart folks would have us create content that can be viewed on ANY viewport, but I consider that a tad bit unrealistic. I've been out of Front-end dev for a few years though, so perhaps things have changed.

Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone

#90

Post by iamben »

ThePadawan wrote: post #6

Just because my horizontal resolution is around 1200, I am not on a tablet. It's amazing how many websites are incredibly unusable when displayed 2-up on my 27" monitor. There's so much screen estate, but I often literally have to resize the window to fullscreen to find a search or login field.

It's a difficult one though - say I have left menu, and a sidebar on the right, and a central column with my copy. Very roughly, at about ~1350px (so neatly displayed on a generic 1440 laptop) I have about 250*2 (500px) for my sidebars, about 800px for my central column, which at a decent font size will give me a 'right-ish' about of words per line, and a few more pixels for gutters.

As you start to make that smaller - 1200, 1100, something has to change. We can maybe adjust the font size in the main column, maybe there's some flexibility to shrink the sidebars (but maybe there isn't, because we need an ad in there, and that can't be resized). So we have to adjust - lose a sidebar to a hamburger menu, or change our horizontal menu at the top to include the most clicked links (and not the ten links we have before). Maybe the search bar becomes an icon, because it's more important we push the "Buy Now" button than give people an option to search, etc etc.

It's an art - what do people need the most? What will make them convert? What can we remove first? What resolutions are most used, and how do we optimise for that?

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