Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

seg6.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 172 posts

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#101

Post by PetitPrince »

So this interpret the sidebar as a temporary UI element (like a popover window), but for me I'd rather interpret the sidebar as a constant element (like the sidebar of Windows Explorer). And indeed I'm using Firefox with Tree Style Tabs or Sidebery to have an explorer-like tree view of my browsing session; it makes more sense for me to have this as a permanent fixture.

With that in mind, I would think this kind of preference should be under the control of the browser, not of an individual website.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#102

Post by globular-toast »

crtasm wrote: post #44
inventor7777 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? On macOS Safari I see a scroll bar that I can drag with my mouse if I wish.

Scrolling the page with mousewheel/multitouch doesn't work unless the pointer is inside the white area ...appears it's been fixed since my original comment. There's still no scrollbar in the expected place on the side of my browser window though.

It's still broken. It seems to use JS to scroll when outside the white area, but this has a different effect from native browser scrolling. On my device the native scroll is smooth but the fake one is immediate and jumps further on each scroll.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#103

Post by account42 »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #75
saghm wrote: post #67

I'm confused about why this website is using less than half of my window for content. I understand wanting some margins, but a third of my window on each side seems pretty egregious. At least it's centered though!

wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line is often recommended in digital typography by UX. research implies that an optimum length exists to maximize reading speed, and although it depends on many factors 55-75 is often parroted as a universal rule.

If only UX worried more about user preferences instead of coming up with these dogmatic rules. We can already resize the browser window if we want shorter lines.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#104

Post by antimages »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #75
saghm wrote: post #67

I'm confused about why this website is using less than half of my window for content. I understand wanting some margins, but a third of my window on each side seems pretty egregious. At least it's centered though!

wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line is often recommended in digital typography by UX. research implies that an optimum length exists to maximize reading speed, and although it depends on many factors 55-75 is often parroted as a universal rule.

Incidentally, the same parrots love eating ants, which is why they're okay with the awful squished up and narrow images the same column width allows for.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#105

Post by antimages »

sodapopcan wrote: post #5
jszymborski wrote: post #3

margin:0 auto is the (probably incorrect) incantation I have always reached for

That's fine but it only centres horizontally. Usually when people talk about "the div centring problem" they mean x and y, dead centre (as this article is).

I disagree that's what people mean by "Centering a div" and the hilariously repetitive corpus of programmerhumor jokes on the matter seem to disagree too.

And in either case, I don't think the article fully agrees either, since the thesis of it relates to a strictly horizontal element. If the article doesn't intend to disagree, then it was just a framing device they used in the writing that has some distractions regarding the vertical component unfortunately attached.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#106

Post by duskdozer »

account42 wrote: post #103
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line is often recommended in digital typography by UX. research implies that an optimum length exists to maximize reading speed, and although it depends on many factors 55-75 is often parroted as a universal rule.

If only UX worried more about user preferences instead of coming up with these dogmatic rules. We can already resize the browser window if we want shorter lines.

I'm sure there's something going back to newspapers on this (though they would of course, fill multiple columns), but I can't help but suspect a lot of these UX studies are just predetermined to justify things like extra space on the margins for ads, "related content" distractions, and such things.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#107

Post by duskdozer »

alterom wrote: post #54
drewbeck wrote: post #45

You’ve effectively created a slide over sidebar. It’s an interesting hack to get there but IMO “should” properly be the domain of the browser.

See, I'm keeping my siidebar open most of the time, so I WANT it to cover the content that would otherwise be visible - said no one ever. But yay, it's centered relative to the window now! God forbid the user tiles their windows, because it breaks the aesthetic the website author intended.

The internet has become so imbalanced in favor of what the website owner wants to run on my machine. I've still not found a reliable way of modifying user-hostile React pages. I'm sure before long it will take custom builds to avoid custom CSS being blocked by anti-tamper measures.

Re: We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

#110

Post by happymellon »

gmueckl wrote: post #98
happymellon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The window and its position shouldn't matter to the app. My tiling window manager doesn't care what your snowflake app thinks it wants, and I don't either.

Then continue to enjoy your broken popup menus and combo box drop downs, for starters.

All apps I use are well behaved and work to the relationship that the window they are given.

I'm trying to think of any that try to fight the interface quite as much as this.

Post reply on HN