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

shkspr.mobi

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

#271

Post by contravariant »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #263
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…

You're missing the forest for the trees here. Sites are using pixels as a proxy for physical device size. Which obviously breaks. I doubt people actually intend to display mobile view on a 720px, 12" wide device. They're only working correctly if you ignore the intent and only look at the technical implementation. The technical implementation is flawed and doesn't accomplish the intent.

But the OP is using pixels as a proxy for screen size as well, they're deliberately presenting their screen as 720x1080 to make the fonts bigger because they are too far from the screen.

The stupidest thing to do at that stage would be to say "ah I see you're running a low resolution on a huge screen, let me make all the text tiny".

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

#273

Post by ss64 »

freebreakfast wrote: post #164
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 author's proposed solution is for sites to use DPI instead This is untenable as well. You'll end up with microscopic websites on high DPI phone screens.

What I use is @media (pointer: coarse) and (hover: none) { If you have a mouse plugged in, you get the desktop design.

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

#274

Post by ironmagma »

NeutronStar wrote: post #248
marssaxman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to rotate your screen; just shrink your browser. I know that lots of people like to use fullscreen windows, but that makes me feel claustrophobic; text ought to be formatted in narrower columns for comfortable reading, so I like narrower browsers. This often fools websites into sending me the phone layout, which is unhelpful and annoying.

So what's your solution? How do we differentiate between a tablet user and someone who decided to shrink their windows?

Copying from elsewhere in this thread: `@media (pointer: coarse)`

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

#275

Post by rhacker »

chrismorgan wrote: post #197
rhacker wrote: post #137

Takeaway: I need to start using units like Inch, Pt, mm instead of pixels.

No. All of those units are defined in terms of CSS pixels. 1in = 25.4mm = 72pt = 96px

Well that's just useless then.

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

#276

Post by idonotknowwhy »

Similar issues here since working from home on my 19 inch CRT. Easy solution, hold ctrl and scroll down with the scroll wheel. That zooms out a bit and the websites pop back to normal again. Had similar issues with the crosshair in halo reach on PC, it was an oval instead of a circle. Luckily they fixed it a few months ago.

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

#277

Post by ss64 »

awillen wrote: post #151

As a product manager, my immediate response is... not worth the time. You've chosen to have a unique setup, which is fine, but your use case represents some absolutely miniscule fraction of users. On top of that, it's not even that websites are unusable, just that they're not ideal. When you decide to do weird/special/unique stuff, don't expect the world to adapt to you. You can rotate your monitor back or live with…

People with disabilities or visual impairments often have unusual setups that enable them to read. They didn't CHOOSE to be disabled.

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

#278

Post by quicklime »

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 author's proposed solution is for sites to use DPI instead, but this would thwart the preferences of users who use scaling because they want the whole site to look bigger.

Agree. I sometimes browse the web on my TV - and I sit about 2 metres (or 6 feet) away from it. So the TV screen occupies a similar portion of my field of view that a phone would, and I usually browse at 150-200% zoom.

DPI might help you figure out the size of the screen, but it doesn't tell you how much of a person's field of view that screen occupies, which is what really matters.

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

#279

Post by yurishimo »

brundolf wrote: post #254
esrauch wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iphoneX looks like it has a css px width of 812px. They may also be trying to capture tablets, which are pushing above 1024 css px.

I just checked and the iPhone X has a height of 812px. It has a width of 375px. The regular iPad has a width of 768px, and the iPad Pro has a width of 1024px. So you could be right about them trying to capture all tablets, though a hamburger menu on the enormous iPad Pro sounds just as ridiculous as it does on a vertical monitor

The hamburger is more for "better" touch navigation though. I know these devices work fairly good with standard hover type states now, but the UX could be argued to be better when optimized for touch inputs.

Sizing is another matter entirely, in which I would agree, yea a tiny hamburger menu on an iPad Pro is likely bad. We all have engineering budgets though and in the grand scheme of things, iPads are likely a small fraction of the visitor base for these sites, so I get it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#280

Post by grincho »

Width-based media queries are simply a corrupt idea altogether. In addition to the problem complained noted in the post, they give rise to other pathological behaviors I encounter daily. I increase the zoom of a page to better see an image, only to have the image shrink due to a layout change. I shrink a window to remove a huge empty margin, only to have the text recede even further.

They way they're implemented in browsers, width media queries are a UI antipattern. They violate the principle of least astonishment because their boundaries are invisible, causing the user to be surprised every time.

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