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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

#361

Post by Talanes »

pc86 wrote: post #153
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 just want to read stuff from the comfort of my bed with my laptop a few feet away. That's not what laptops are for. I think that's a typical snide HN/Stack Overflow-type answer, and I don't mean it rudely, but it does have some bearing on this conversation. What's the intended form factor of a laptop? What are the top 10 intended form factors? I'm not sure "reading from 'a few' [several] feet away, while I'm layi…

>What's the intended form factor of a laptop? What are the top 10 intended form factors? I'm not sure "reading from 'a few' [several] feet away, while I'm laying down in bed" is in that top 10 list.

I mean, I guess less so now that everyone has phones and maybe an e-reader, but... that's not such a weird use case. That's basically how I spent the later half of high school.

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

#362

Post by neop1x »

22c wrote: post #335
brundolf wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

w3c never wanted to implement physical units [1], saying OS are not reporting screen DPI reliably, etc.

I understand they had to start with something and 20 years ago no one expected thre will ever be monitors with DPI > 96 but I don't understand why the situation hasn't changed yet. Now that we have many physical screen sizes with vastly varying densities.

In my opinion, devices with a screen are like a sheet of paper. Imagine a tablet or Remarkable eink. You can print only that small font on such paper. If the font is too small, we can use a magnifying glass or, in case of electronic devices, clever scaling mode.

If that was implemented, buying a bigger monitor would actually mean we could fit more content, wider newspaper there.

The current situation is just a mess with designers just randomly guessing how it's gonna look on most current devices and using media queries to somehow automagically solve it all. But it is not uncommon to see a website on a huge hi-DPI monitor in such a way that a heading takes 1/4 of the screen height and there are empty unused paddings everywhere. I.e. if you buy a bigger monitor, everything just gets bigger, including most of fonts, unnecesarily. Sometimes all you get is three columns of text instead of one. Sometimes. If media queries are set up reasonably well. But even then, on high-resolution screens there is sometimes big empty space on the left and right side because it is just "highest-width" media query and designers didn't expect you would have so many pixels horizontally...

[1] https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/614

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

#363

Post by account42 »

DangerousPie wrote: post #308
owlmirror wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's something I don't understand. the Dev tools in Chrome and Firefox make it really easy to test through every resolution without problems. every UI change I make I view in all possible resolutions and its quite obvious of something breaks and I adjust accordingly.

The tooling isn't the problem, time is. Every device and resolution you support takes time and at some point you hit a point of diminishing returns.

If it takes too much time, you are probably doing something wrong like having hardcoded layouts for different resolutions instead of using reflow as much as possible.

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

#365

Post by account42 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #329
ss64 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't differentiate by type of device. I just detect aspect ratio: @media (min-aspect-ratio: 1/1) /* wide */ @media (max-aspect-ratio: 1/1) /* tall */ @media (aspect-ratio: 1/1) /* square */

And what do you think the aspect ratio tells you? People do use portrait orientation for monitors or windowed mode for browsers.

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

#366

Post by chrismorgan »

rhacker wrote: post #275
chrismorgan wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well that's just useless then.

There have been attempts to define physical units (Firefox used to have a unit called mozmm which tried to be one physical millimetre), but eventual consensus is that (a) you can’t actually figure this out, because screens don’t tell you their exact physical sizes; (b) if it’s not accurate, there are exactly zero genuine use cases for it; and (c) even if it was accurate, it would still almost never be correct to use it. Remember that you don’t know the viewing distance, either—letters being 5mm high is all very well twenty centimetres away, but at four metres it’s utterly illegible.

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

#367

Post by account42 »

cratermoon wrote: post #294
sgerenser wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it’s not just me. I think HN is the only site I use that I’ve bothered to configure custom zoom factor for.

It's definitely not just you. And I really get sick of the people saying things like "just zoom" or "set a custom minimum font size". When I read that, I read, "we're ableist and here's a few crumbs so we can feel better about ourselves".

Do you also think every site should come with a built in screen reader? Accessibiliy should be about enabling everyone to use the website - using additional tools if needed - not to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. If zoom / min font size breaks things complain about that, otherwise don't force giant fonts on everyone else.

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

#368

Post by account42 »

jefftk wrote: post #233
ur-whale wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically go from width=1920 x height=1080 (or larger but with similar aspect ratio) to width=949 x height=1028 On many sites, this trigger the appearance of the dreaded hamburger menu.

When people lay out desktop sites, 960px is the smallest common minimum design width. Many of these sites are statically laid out, and if rendered with the width of 949px would require horizontal scrolling.

> Many of these sites are statically laid out

Which they shouldn't be.

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

#369

Post by mjevans »

pc86 wrote: post #153
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 just want to read stuff from the comfort of my bed with my laptop a few feet away. That's not what laptops are for. I think that's a typical snide HN/Stack Overflow-type answer, and I don't mean it rudely, but it does have some bearing on this conversation. What's the intended form factor of a laptop? What are the top 10 intended form factors? I'm not sure "reading from 'a few' [several] feet away, while I'm layi…

A laptop or phone 'casting' to a wide screen TV.

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

#370

Post by dybber »

I have the same problem, not because I have a vertical screen setup, but because I usually split my screen in two parts. I rarely have a website open in full screen, as I'd rather have a chat-window/terminal/editor/other browser window open in the other half.
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