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The ideal viewport doesn't exist

viewports.fyi

141–150 of 202 posts

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#141
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps drive me fucking nuts, taking over zoom. As do nearly every other app that does it. They think they know what's good for me, and they don't, and it leads to me using them less. Yes, paper maps just work better for me a lot of the time. The only thing maps.app or Google maps are good for are finding places to spend money or driving to places to spend money. If you have any other spatial interests, they're almost…

I would love to see your maps app that doesn't touch zoom.

No offense, I had to try that..

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/LARGE_el...

Look how fast and responsive it is!

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#142

> "The main point we’re trying to get across is that you simply do not know how users are going to visit your website or web app. Instead of making design decisions on strict, limited breakpoints, keep in mind the sheer amount of fragmentation there is in viewports." I don't know how useful this is. setting breakpoints allows some sanity in the build and testing process otherwise you have an infinite scope for issues…

>I don't know how useful this is. >setting breakpoints allows some sanity in the build and testing process clamp allows for sane responsiveness https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/clamp and if needed you can add some minimal breakpoints. The fact is that most front end devs don't know about it, and there is no framework that I know of which is based around its use (and everything nowadays seems to be abo…

it seems much cleaner to give each size its own css?

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume you're talking about maximized windows, but that still does not equal "filling the entire screen", because browsers have their own user interface around the viewport. Go maximize your browser and enter this into your dev tools: console.log(`${window.innerWidth}x${window.innerHeight}`) Does that equal your screen resolution?

I like this because opening the dev tools has a high chance of changing innerHeight :)

And even if you open dev tools in another window, many people run browsers that are configured to display other controls... like tabs, or an address bar.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#144

> "The main point we’re trying to get across is that you simply do not know how users are going to visit your website or web app. Instead of making design decisions on strict, limited breakpoints, keep in mind the sheer amount of fragmentation there is in viewports." I don't know how useful this is. setting breakpoints allows some sanity in the build and testing process otherwise you have an infinite scope for issues…

[deleted]

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and dont do stuff like hijacking the scroll, zoom or other common behaviours. The hijacking of scrolling pisses me off so god damn much that I've considered building Firefox from source and modifying the code to completely eliminate a website's ability to set the scroll position.[0] Front end devs, I implore you. Stop acting like you think you know what the user wants in regards to scrolling behavior . Smooth scrol…

You're mad at the wrong people here. I've never met a frontend dev who doesn't hate moving stuff vertically or scrolljacking. It's the marketing people that want it.

The one that hurt me the most was making a page that started at the bottom and scrolled up. I left a comment somewhere in the JavaScript apologizing for it.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve worked in front-end dev for a while you can be aware of all the issues. The problem, generally, is that frontend dev is taught poorly if it’s taught at all, and the barrier to entry is so low that there’s an Eternal September problem.

I'd think that eventually we'd have a large enough cohort of folks that know web dev well since the barrier is so low, but I think most people try to get out of frontend development asap.

I dunno, I love it, quirks and all. The ability to make and deploy new UIs quickly is unmatched elsewhere. I also may be weird in that JS/TS is my favourite programming language.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#147
post #99

I'm not, and never was, a "front-end guy". I've noticed more and more quirks (bugs?) in UIs where something is off screen, or unclickable, or suffers extremely unhelpful placement that prevents or significantly impedes my use of a web site/app. Rotate phone/tablet, change font size, hide URL bar, mental note to try it on a desktop or laptop "later". This feels like the front-end version of "it works in dev".

I have this shaky hypothesis where the majority of UX devs today (not just web devs) grew up consuming content on smart phones, ipads, and small laptop screens. Their default way of interacting with technology is one app or web page at a time, all in maximized windows taking up the whole screen, and switching between between full-screen apps to multi-task. Perhaps this pattern carries over into their adult work, wher…

Your visitors and paying customers access your site on mobile. Mobile is the majority. If you don't design for mobile you lose business. It has nothing to do with the UX devs. If I notice 80% of my customers come from Japan, you better believe I will make everything available in Japanese. The same with mobile. Most people do not use computers. Most people who use computers only use them for work in specific applications. Most people who have a computer at home haven't been able to use it in years, because every time they try to boot it, Windows Update takes up all the system resources and bandwidth.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#148

I was hoping to read some kind of solution at the end of all this huge text. Some radical way to do layouts without using viewports. Instead I got a link to buy a book from some author. Why is this even here? This is a long ad with useless data points.

There's a way to do it entirely without viewports, although it's extremely unpopular with designers. Present a .css file for mobile or for desktop, based on the presence of "mobile" in the agent string. Chrome continues to report that agent data and it's very accurate for this use case (where your primary aim is to detect mobile equivalent, else present for desktop). You can drop the viewport html tag. All major phon…

For any aspiring frontend devs that might not know better: they're talking about user agent string parsing.

Please don't do this. There's a reason it's an unpopular approach.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#149

> "The main point we’re trying to get across is that you simply do not know how users are going to visit your website or web app. Instead of making design decisions on strict, limited breakpoints, keep in mind the sheer amount of fragmentation there is in viewports." I don't know how useful this is. setting breakpoints allows some sanity in the build and testing process otherwise you have an infinite scope for issues…

I agreed with you until you went overboard with your last sentence. A "hostile" platform? What in the world? You literally just mentioned how easy it can be to avoid all this crap. There is nothing "hostile" about the web. I really don't like these overly strong statements.

Re: The ideal viewport doesn't exist

#150

Responsive sites have to be like elastic 'jelly' and accommodate every view-port resolution. The only exception being non-mobile-friendly web apps, in which case some sort of manifest should be read by the browser and presented to the user clearly stating mobile isn't supported and they should use a desktop browser instead. Then there's the progressive web app (PWA) debacle, where users don't even know what a PWA is…

> Then there's the progressive web app (PWA) debacle, where users don't even know what a PWA is and don't know that they can pin sites to their home-screen, simulating an app.

Users don't need to know what a PWA is. Thereason users don't know that they can be 'installed' is because they're on iOS, where Apple has been effectively hamstringing them in favor of the Apple App Store. There is a way to install PWAs on iOS, but it's quite hidden.

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