131–140 of 309 posts
Vision: Game Boy Advance-sized website. Problem: Very tiny. Solution: Scale to viewport in integer increments. Result: https://anaminus.github.io/ This disables zoom. In fact, it actively fights the zoom level to always fit the viewport. Have I committed a great sin?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I agree. A plain old web page is rarely a problem. Ctrl-plus-plus-plus-plus however many times I need it, and I'm good. It's always 'modern' web pages that insist on fighting me.
We need to admit that "modern" web pages are a thing. If we keep ignoring most of the web because "they are doing it wrong" then accessibility will never be solved.
IF don't fight it and if you respect semantics and progressive enhancement / beautiful degradation. You get so much by default: legible colors and font sizes, tabbed page navigation, alt texts, clickable labels, zoomable interface...
When you embrace the platform and its spirit, you get accessible results quite easily. But not a lot of people seem to embrace it. Many people seem to think "what to do for what I want to see" instead of "what to do for what I want to mean", and you lose if you do this. You need to get your meaning right and then decorate it carefully. You should not paint first. But that's probably not a web-specific issue.
What's more, building accessible things may make you gain time, by having a robust basis. It's not always a cost.
It’s not just accessibility. I’ve last track of the number of times I’ve seen a mobile website with a table that extends past the right side of the viewport and zoom disabled. You can’t scroll, and you can’t zoom, so you can’t read the table.
It’s not just accessibility. I’ve last track of the number of times I’ve seen a mobile website with a table that extends past the right side of the viewport and zoom disabled. You can’t scroll, and you can’t zoom, so you can’t read the table.
Maybe this is a good place to ask since there's a lot of web devs here: What is SO effing hard about drawing within the screen on web?! I can't tell you the number of times I've seen this issue. Just the other day I saw reddit's sign up form is totally broken on iOS, you have to swap between landscape/portrait multiple times and hope whatever garbage layout engine it uses redraws the button inside the screen.
I expect it's fairly rare for the employer of a web designer to give a shit what the site looks like on a phone, which means the designers don't give a shit either.
I posted this 11 years ago: https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/01/device-width-and-how-not...
It's not a trend, it's been around as long as it's been possible. Site owners dislike letting their users have control.
yeah, I know a thing or two about zooming in, having set HN to 190%. On an unrelated note, why is HN text so small? I understand if it were a hunting site, where you're naturally supposed to use a scope, but for an IT forum that's unusual, given half of us wear glasses!
The bigger problem is when posts are printed with a 50% grey font on top of a 25% grey background. Like it's such an obvious usability issue that I have no idea why the developer who set it up didn't have a little laugh at their own expense for the mistake the first time they saw it and then immediately went back and fixed it. Why it it still like this in 2022?
AND of course it doesn't support zoom because almost no native apps support zoom. (Why do they get a pass?)
It’s not just accessibility. I’ve last track of the number of times I’ve seen a mobile website with a table that extends past the right side of the viewport and zoom disabled. You can’t scroll, and you can’t zoom, so you can’t read the table.
Another maddening thing are tiny fonts on mobile devices and pinch zoom does not reflow text. So you can't read without zooming in, and you can't see the whole page when you do, so you need to put your phone in landscape mode and drag left and right to read each and every row.
Even better, one chrome issue/bug report, had google devs on the tracker explaining how it's fine, and how each website should just fix things.
They were blathering on about how websites are broken, should be fixed, utter absurd.
The sheer, unmitigated gall, of saying "screw users" is beyond comprehension.
Google: unless you want another series of Professor Farnsworth posters around HQ, fix it!
What's the rational for not wanting websites and web apps to disable zoom, and not complaining about all native apps doing it? Would these people want to be able to zoom in native apps as well? Or is there a reason it's fine in native apps but not on the web?
I am not the author, but in native apps you can at least increase font size via system settings.
There are very legitimate and valid reasons to disable page zooming: it can break layout, it can be triggered accidentally causing usability issues because content then overflows, and it is a poor solution to increase text readability as you often then have to scroll to read a full line of text.
Not allowing to do it is not the solution.