Looks like a user agent concern.
To be fair, if those attributes had never been standardised it wouldn't need to be a user agent concern. But I agree, all browsers should follow Safari's lead and ignore them.
Please stop disabling zoom
81–90 of 309 posts
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#82I don't understand why the functionality exists for websites to dictate how users can and cannot view a page in the first place. This is like if you were reading a book that detected if you were trying to use a magnifying glass and immediately caused a glare to appear to prevent you from being able to read it. It is fucked up.
You don't understand why someone would want to create something the way they want to, really? How much choice do you have in the typesetting of any book you've ever bought? You could still use a magnifying glass on your monitor, as some Russian General was photographed doing recently... . . Obviously I think the choice to disable zoom, etc, is daft, but ultimately that is the creator's right to call, advisedly or oth…
It is the creator's right to dictate the original presentation, but it is not the creator's right to dictate a user's behavior. Just like it is a filmmaker's right to set the default framerate and playback speed for a film, but you can rewind or fastforward, or play the film at X speed if you so wish in your media player.
Disabling or otherwise inhibiting user behavior is not a creator's right.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#83It’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.
Wow. I had no idea that this was something explicitly imposed on us by developers! I thought it was some kind of inherent issue with mobile.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#84Looks like a user agent concern.
No. Sometimes it's good to disable zoom (e. g. in web apps that function as a big canvas, like Figma). Pages should use the feature correctly. People shouldn't have to fiddle with browser settings just because someone can't CSS properly.
The user is zooming because what they see is not legible to them. If Figma can't work out how to handle that, that's Figma's failing.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#85My pet theory: I'm pretty sure this is because when HTML5 became a thing, some major tech blog showed us what an HTML5 page would look like (simplified doctype, meta charset) and they included the viewport settings that disabled zoom. Then pretty much everyone copied from these guides, and here we are. I remember I had used HTML5 skeleton templates for a while before I learned that the "maximum-scale=1, user-scalable…
Almost all major template for JS frameworks these days include that line. And there are tons of guides that specify adding that in. I get why it's there, if you're building a PWA that is supposed to mimick a mobile app, you have to enable that to override some annoying mobile browser behaviors like zooming on an input. The problem is that the above scenario is about the only time you would want to set the viewport in…
Call me highly skeptical. I have not personally seen disabling zoom recommended in a very long time.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#86There are plenty of evidently anti-user features like disabling zoom, disabling selection and so, i wonder why say Firefox even supports them.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... a small minority ... presbyopia ... I think what you just indirectly pointed out is that software is largely written by young, ignorant people who don't appreciate that everyone will get to experience presbyopia, and it happens sooner than you think. Maybe we should require product owners to be at least 40 years old ;-).
For years my optometrist told me I would eventually get presbyopia and then finally I reached the point where I need two pairs of glasses. It is on my mind because one of my hobbies is a cyberphysical artsystem that has a small book of design rules and presbyopia is what sets the limits on feature size. (You can't just tell people "hold the card closer")
Could you explain a bit more what do you mean by "cyberphysical artsystem" ? I have no clue what this is, but the name sounds cool
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#88What'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?
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... a small minority ... presbyopia ... I think what you just indirectly pointed out is that software is largely written by young, ignorant people who don't appreciate that everyone will get to experience presbyopia, and it happens sooner than you think. Maybe we should require product owners to be at least 40 years old ;-).
I've become "that guy" in presentations who constantly tells people "fonts too small", "can't read cause the contrast isn't enough", etc... My hope over time is that I stop being invited to meetings or people actually take the time to fix their presentations before it is presented to a wider audience.
I had the old MS Surface Pro 2 (11" screen, I think) as my daily driver for awhile, and found that designing PowerPoints and conference sessions - including code demos - to be legible on that screen led to better presentations.
Re: Please stop disabling zoom
#90I don't understand why the functionality exists for websites to dictate how users can and cannot view a page in the first place. This is like if you were reading a book that detected if you were trying to use a magnifying glass and immediately caused a glare to appear to prevent you from being able to read it. It is fucked up.
You don't understand why someone would want to create something the way they want to, really? How much choice do you have in the typesetting of any book you've ever bought? You could still use a magnifying glass on your monitor, as some Russian General was photographed doing recently... . . Obviously I think the choice to disable zoom, etc, is daft, but ultimately that is the creator's right to call, advisedly or oth…
The choice to allow zoom, or scrolling, or window resizing, or even fonts and colors... basically anything that affects my web browsing experience, should belong to me as the user, not some web site developer 1,000 miles away from me. Browsers have taken way too much control from the user (or hidden it in Settings menus) and handed the controls over to web designers. Browsers have a setting to take back this zoom control, but really it shouldn't be a setting--it should be the default. The web developer should not have the ability to disable a feature of my browser any more than he should be able to reboot my machine.