Just because I have an ARM processor doesn't mean I'm on a phone too.
Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
331–340 of 399 posts
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't think that's quite right either. Pointer coarse would just refer to the device used for pointing. Using a tablet with a mouse would be "pointer: fine" but it's still a tablet. As always, the issue isn't black and white. There is no solution that always works, because it depends on what you're targeting. If you want to scale elements to be easier clickable for people who might devices where it's harder to click/…
> Using a tablet with a mouse would be "pointer: fine" I would want to check this empirically before accepting it as gospel. At least on the iPad, a mouse pointer is kinda halfway between a finger and a classic mouse pointer, and having to guess, my guess is that Safari doesn't change the designation just because there's a mouse plugged in.
Safari simulates a finger press when mouse is clicked. I’m 99% sure. Will check.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#333I appreciate this pain in the exact opposite way! Just because I’m on a wide (or big) screen doesn’t mean I’m browsing with a wide window! I’m the guy throwing off your resolution stats if you do analytics, I do all my non-phone computing at a desk with a 42” 4K screen @1x. As in:
- My available pixels suggest HiDPI, but that’s wrong
- My browser window is probably twice as tall, and half as wide, as you think
The worst I usually encounter gratefully is bad scroll position content disclosure (sites designed to show or transition content on scroll assume a certain height and don’t even check, or mistakenly assume I’m looking at a different header than I am).
I’ll say it’s actually hard to accommodate my use case. I built a site that uses scroll position to progressively present content and my own browser window was harder to accommodate than any other (at this time on a 27” monitor with the same pixel density before 4K/5K was common). Regression testing the more common screen/window choices was a huge slog. It’s almost definitely such a weird set of circumstances that almost no site would bother. I don’t blame them. It’s very challenging and very unlikely to be your visitor who needs it.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no such intention, I was merely rephrasing what they said: > But I find the fonts slightly too small at that resolution – given how far I sit from the screen.
Without accusing you of any -isms, OP merely said that, given how far they sit from the screen, the font is too small. You conflated that with sitting too far away. There are a lot of reasons why that might not be correct, including presbyopia. I think it's unlikely OP is sitting at that distance by accident, since it's pretty easy to move a monitor closer, so one of those reasons is more likely to apply than is your…
Since tone carries very badly let me say up front that I'm mostly just confused by this entire discussion.
For now I stand by my assumption that OP wanted the fonts to be bigger because they were too far from the screen to read them at their current size. Though I fear I can't see why their reason for wanting fonts to be bigger would matter. I could have omitted OP's reason for wanting the fonts to be bigger but I thought a brief description would help keep the discussion related to the article.
The main thing I was advocating was that software should allow fonts to be bigger regardless of physical size, but clearly I've somehow allowed my argument to be horribly misconstrued.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#335Sites 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…
I would add to this that the specific sites in question have fairly unreasonable media-queries: The Guardian breaks to mobile at 980px, and Just Eat at 1024px . On my MacBook Pro with default scaling, these are both more than 50% the width of the monitor; i.e. if I size the window to half-screen, I'm in mobile mode on these sites. For reference, in sites I make I usually set the mobile breakpoint closer to 768px (not…
Am I missing something or do CSS media queries not solve this problem by providing an actual physical measurement?
What's wrong with using something like: @media (min-width: 8in)
To determine if someone is using a larger screen (or window)?
Edit:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/09/css-length-explained/
Seems like 8in is just short-hand for 8*96px. Thanks for nothing, web standards.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've emailed one of YC's huge successes multiple times over years about how it's frustrating to have horizontal scrolling on a browser that's half of a 1080p display wide (i.e., nearly 1000px). Unfortunately, the horizontal scrolling UX with substantial wasted whitespace on the sides remains.
It could be worse. One particular web app I use daily has horizontal scroll bars even when full screen (and has some off the main info at far right).
This is the unmitigated disaster that is the Azure dashboard isn’t it?
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#337Sites 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…
I would add to this that the specific sites in question have fairly unreasonable media-queries: The Guardian breaks to mobile at 980px, and Just Eat at 1024px . On my MacBook Pro with default scaling, these are both more than 50% the width of the monitor; i.e. if I size the window to half-screen, I'm in mobile mode on these sites. For reference, in sites I make I usually set the mobile breakpoint closer to 768px (not…
I like the idea of using relative units for media queries but it interferes with people being able to zoom and get the desired outcome.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't use HackerNews on my monitor without scaling. If I press Ctrl+0 on Chrome, the site becomes unusable.
HN has chosen to use very small fonts; I also leave it a bit zoomed in. Specifically, they have: .comment { font-size: 9pt; } .commhead { font-size: 8pt; } If I turn off all the site's font-size overrides, I no longer need to zoom in.
And it would have been avoided entirely if HN simply used relative font measures (em/rem) and allowed the user just set the damn base font size in the browser settings.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is almost useless on mobile. Tiny UI elements that are hard to hit, people using code blocks for quotes that cut off after the first few characters, etc
At least it allows for pinch zooming, which is (IMO, of course) an acceptable compromise. Maintain readability for the text while still making it possible to hit the UI elements.
Exactly. Most of the time, recoverable flaws are better than immutable bad design.
Re: Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real real problem is that so many sites overcomplicate their design. HN works beautifully on any window / screen size.
What? I can’t count how often I accidentally downvoted a post because I can’t hit the correct arrow on mobile!
But it doesn't break your ability to zoom, so you at least have the option to (quickly) fix it.