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!
I can't downvote (I think?) and I don't miss it. I use an android client (Materialistic) that doesn't even provide me with an option to do so, and I haven't looked for a way to do so. If I disagree with a post or comment and don't want to add a response, I just move on. If I'm in the browser, I'm probably not even signed in unless I want to upvote or save something.
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…
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 have many dissatisfaction for YouTube Music. One of my problem is that the Web hides some buttons/elements like +1 button when the window < 1280px (IIRC) even though there are empty spaces.
Yeah, I still very often get "here is the desktop design, here is the mobile design". Depending on who is developing the designs depends how that's going to translate. I have all the time in the world for developers that reflow the page and remove/adjust elements at different breakpoints (based on the design) between 'desktop' and 'mobile' so the experience is good for everyone. Sadly, most people don't bother.
Convincing a client to pay for time to spend checking the design and tweaking it in the space between the breakpoints can be more hassle than it's worth. That said, sane breakpoints can usually avoid unexpected hamburgers on the desktop.
You convince them in the same way you convince a PM to give you time to write tests for your work: you don't give them an alternative. "You want this done? That'll be 20 billable hours." And your estimate includes the time needed to do work you're willing to sign your name to. When I hire a plumber or an architect, I tell them what needs doing, but I expect and trust that they'll put in the work (and bill me accordingly) to ensure that it gets done properly, even though I don't understand all of the specifics of what doing those jobs properly entails.
I was just using my browser in half-screen mode on reddit and I got this: https://i.imgur.com/z5Sb7Mj.png ... my screen is a bad resolution ~37in TV...
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.
This isn't about them. This is about a guy who chooses to have his monitor vertical. Don't take things wildly out of context in an effort to make it sound like people have made points which they absolutely have not.
The problem is that the horizontal space only tells you how many pixels are available, not how big whatever you use those pixels for ends up on the screen. The precise vs coarse isn't helpful either for something like this because this isn't just about clicking vs tapping, it is about how the end result looks - and there are PCs with both very small monitors and very big monitors (and relatively large monitors with l…
CSS pixels are good for layout, not just sizes and positions, because a pixel (in a browser) now represents an apparent size. That is, if the user has a large device far from their face, or a small device close to their face, a pixel represents a similar portion of their vision. If they want things larger, they can adjust the scaling so a pixel represents a larger apparent size, or the reverse.
This is never true in practice though and what you describe is just about sizes and position, you can't change the layout with CSS pixels - you need resolution media queries for that.
Thanks. Does the server really send the info to construct all possible page configurations for all possible devices? And if so, why are the websites still rendering with touch-interface objects when we doesn't have touch, as reported by OP? (The lack of touch screen ability seems like it should trump things like screen resolution.)
Laptops and desktops can have touchscreens too. When having a small viewport less stuff fits on screen and thus a different design is required, we may associate this with our smartphones but they also work for mouse/keyboard input.
I know large screens can have touch. I'm asking why they are sending the instructions for rendering a page requiring touch controls to devices that don't have touch interfaces. (Seems like a waste of bandwidth, but maybe it ends up being insignificant overall.)
