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The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

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Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#121

Post by bzbarsky »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #62
ntakasaki wrote: post #14

Edit: The previous title was "Windows Phone's IE starts masquerading as mobile Safari to render pages properly" Looks like the webkit prefix tags are creating the new IE6. As usual, it's the web developers fault for not updating their CSS prefixes. http://css.dzone.com/articles/why-webkit-new-ie6-trap-vendor Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft have been complaining about this and Opera had already implemented support for th…

I disagree that the webkit tags are creating the new IE 6, after all (IIRC) they're prefixed because the standards behind them aren't yet finished. On the one side I want to make a ramble about why it takes so long for those standards to finish and unprefixed CSS3 and beyond is possible, but on the other hand - without actual real-life use, how can you find all the edge-cases and practical application to create a com…

They're initially prefixed because the standard is not finished.

Many of them are _still_ prefixed because WebKit has a policy of never removing prefixed features, even if they implement the unprefixed one. So people feel no compunction about using the prefixed stuff in production, and since they only test in WebKit they don't notice when they're using the -webkit-prefixed version even though every single browser (or every browser except WebKit, in some cases) supports the unprefixed standard version.

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#122

Post by bzbarsky »

masklinn wrote: post #98
tomjen3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason to remove them when they are there.

Erm… the query is sorted by most recently indexed, this is code which was just changed, the top hit at this moment is https://github.com/mdilaver/mdilaverins/commits/421298cf9bf1... which is 5 days old .

That's because this CSS is using CSS transforms.

And while IE and Firefox have supported unprefixed CSS transforms for a while now, Chrome and Safari only support the -webkit-prefixed version of CSS transforms so far. So if you want to do transforms, you have to use -webkit prefixes...

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#123

Post by bzbarsky »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #112
masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just another reason why all browsers (not just mobile) should be reporting their screen size. As in, the actual height/width. That's completely useless, 1cm on a mobile device and 1cm on a desktop are not the same for a user, to say nothing of 1cm on a TV screen, an Oculus Rift (where would you even measure size there?) or a projector (which would require a rangefinder for precise estimation and will probab…

> 1cm on a mobile device and 1cm on a desktop You lost me. How is 1cm on a mobile device not the same as 1 cm on a desktop. Yes, they have different pixels resolutions within that centimeter, but the length of a centimeter doesn't change. Well, unless the engineers are fudging the standard so marketing isn't seen to be lying.

The difference is that they look like different sizes to the user because of the different viewing distance.

The really user-relevant size is subtended angle, not linear size, which is why the "px" unit in CSS was defined the way it was.

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#124

Post by masklinn »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #112
masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just another reason why all browsers (not just mobile) should be reporting their screen size. As in, the actual height/width. That's completely useless, 1cm on a mobile device and 1cm on a desktop are not the same for a user, to say nothing of 1cm on a TV screen, an Oculus Rift (where would you even measure size there?) or a projector (which would require a rangefinder for precise estimation and will probab…

> 1cm on a mobile device and 1cm on a desktop You lost me. How is 1cm on a mobile device not the same as 1 cm on a desktop. Yes, they have different pixels resolutions within that centimeter, but the length of a centimeter doesn't change. Well, unless the engineers are fudging the standard so marketing isn't seen to be lying.

> You lost me. How is 1cm on a mobile device not the same as 1 cm on a desktop.

That's because you stopped there and didn't read the rest of the phrase.

> Yes, they have different pixels resolutions within that centimeter

That's not relevant in any way, shape or form, the issue would exist even if all devices had the exact same pixel density.

> the length of a centimeter doesn't change.

The length of a cm doesn't change, but what you can do with it changes a lot due to different viewing distances: a cm at 20cm, a cm at 80cm and a cm at 3m are very different visual beasts, and so are a cm manipulated using fat fingers, a mouse, a stylus or some sort of laser/ir pointer.

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#125

Post by masklinn »

bzbarsky wrote: post #123
drivingmenuts wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1cm on a mobile device and 1cm on a desktop You lost me. How is 1cm on a mobile device not the same as 1 cm on a desktop. Yes, they have different pixels resolutions within that centimeter, but the length of a centimeter doesn't change. Well, unless the engineers are fudging the standard so marketing isn't seen to be lying.

The difference is that they look like different sizes to the user because of the different viewing distance. The really user-relevant size is subtended angle, not linear size, which is why the "px" unit in CSS was defined the way it was.

It's worse than that, there's the visual effect from angular size and the "manipulative" effect from interaction device.

For instance, because it's used with fat and impressive fingers a smartphone held close to your face (and thus with a high angular size for its physical size) needs to provide much bigger controls (in both angular and absolute terms) than a desktop computer manipulated through a mouse.

And of course this isn't linear as manipulating e.g. a Wii through its remote is also very impressive.

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#126

Post by masklinn »

bzbarsky wrote: post #122
masklinn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm… the query is sorted by most recently indexed, this is code which was just changed, the top hit at this moment is https://github.com/mdilaver/mdilaverins/commits/421298cf9bf1... which is 5 days old .

That's because this CSS is using CSS transforms. And while IE and Firefox have supported unprefixed CSS transforms for a while now, Chrome and Safari only support the -webkit-prefixed version of CSS transforms so far. So if you want to do transforms, you have to use -webkit prefixes...

> That's because this CSS is using CSS transforms.

Oh for fuck's sake, the query is specifically looking for -webkit-box-sizing, not for webkit-prefixed properties in general.

Re: The Mobile Web should just work for everyone

#127

Post by bzbarsky »

masklinn wrote: post #126
bzbarsky wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because this CSS is using CSS transforms. And while IE and Firefox have supported unprefixed CSS transforms for a while now, Chrome and Safari only support the -webkit-prefixed version of CSS transforms so far. So if you want to do transforms, you have to use -webkit prefixes...

> That's because this CSS is using CSS transforms. Oh for fuck's sake, the query is specifically looking for -webkit-box-sizing, not for webkit-prefixed properties in general.

Ah, I missed that you were specifically talking about -webkit-box-sizing use there!
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