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Please stop disabling zoom

matuzo.at

91–100 of 309 posts

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#91

I 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.

There was a fundamental shift about 15 years ago where webpages ceased to be markup documents (perhaps with some active elements for convenience) and became javascript applications that ran in your web browser.

To use your book analogy - the web is no longer a bunch of books on a shelf, it's an AR device that shoots lasers into your eye. The net effect may be the same in many use-cases, but not necessarily, and malicious actors now have far more flexibility and power because we've all become accustomed to running random code we download off the internet with a single click.

I am, obviously, not a huge fan of this shift and think a large majority of sites could operate perfectly well under the "markup document" model without needing actual code-execution privileges, or more than a minimal set of code-execution privileges for those actual simple document-related use-cases. Go back to being mostly just a book, basically.

Almost all of the use-cases that javascript gets used for in a document context could really be replaced by navigation between sets of linked, static pages (perhaps embedded where needed) - boy, what an idea. If you delivered a site "as a gzip" then there should barely be any noticeable size difference from that anyway, especially compared to downloading mountains of JS embeds.

The amount of things that truly, truly need interactivity is pretty low - things like chat clients come to mind, but does your bank need to be running javascript on your end? Probably not.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#92
post #22

My 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…

In the late 90s and early 2000s every second bank round these parts decided to do their entire website in Flash. Not just some animations and videos, but I mean the actual entire content of the site was Flash, no HTML. As well as being basically unusable search engines wouldn't index it either so you couldn't find anything.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#93

In the old days you needed to disable zoom in order to get click events immediately, rather than delayed a bit so it can tell whether it's really going to be a zoom operation. Is that still true?

No longer needed. From https://webkit.org/blog/7367/new-interaction-behaviors-in-io...

1. There must be a meta tag of type viewport 2. The viewport must be defined to have width=device-width 3. The content must be at a scale of 1

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#94
post #2

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.

What mobile browser? On iOS Safari, all the example websites mentioned by the OP allowed me to zoom. I guess Safari doesn’t allow zoom to be disabled by websites? Maybe all browsers should work this way?

I've had this happen on iOS Safari. It happens everywhere.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone. For instance, normally sighted people or even people with "normal" nearsightedness, farsightedness, or presbyopia benefit from adequate contrast. Text "size" is another thing because people should be able to control it, particularly given the wide range of different devic…

> Unfortunately people see accessibility as a burden that a small minority puts on the rest of us, but really it is something that benefits everyone Depends on the individual case — I’ve seen entire projects get scrapped because it wouldn’t be feasible to make an “accessible” version. Some things just aren’t work for everyone and that’s okay.

When building new commercial buildings (in the US,) accessibility is a non-negotiable requirement. And for good reason. If an accessible version wasn’t feasible in software, then it’s likely the project should have been scrapped just as a commercial building would never be built without accessibility as part of the core design. There shouldn’t be an “accessible version,” accessibility should be the default. Accessibility should be integral to everything built — especially software.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#96

Yes it is silly. The article actually ends with some useful tips: As a user, you can force allow zooming: In Firefox find the settings, select “Accessibility” and activate “Zoom on all website” In Chrome find the settings, select “Accessibility” and check “Force enable zoom”

I kind of wish the author had lead with this instead of burying it at the bottom. For whatever reach the article gets, this is the part that's going to offer value to readers (it seems unlikely this article will sway a significant number of web developers to change their habits).

Do you really consider it buried?

The entire article barely scratches 250 words. I don't think anything can be considered 'buried' in what is basically a medium-sized paragraph.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is reality. There might be some truth to it, but in my opinion the real problem is the platform itself. I'm going to blame it on browsers and web standards. The web was not designed with accessibility as default. Instead it is a significant amount of work to make things accessible. Every project incurs huge cost in order to achieve it. I truly believe from an accessibility standpoint the web is sim…

> The web was not designed with accessibility as default. Instead it is a significant amount of work to make things accessible. Every project incurs huge cost in order to achieve it. This has got to be satire right? HTML is accessible by default , it's your horrible JS SPA frameworks that break thid. See [0] [0]: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

[deleted]

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The web was not designed with accessibility as default. Instead it is a significant amount of work to make things accessible. Every project incurs huge cost in order to achieve it. This has got to be satire right? HTML is accessible by default , it's your horrible JS SPA frameworks that break thid. See [0] [0]: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

For my day job I put a lot of effort into making an SPA accessible but it is absolutely important to the business because our customers demand it. I haven't perceived maintaining accessibility to be a big burden in the long term. Interestingly the accessibility project forced me to raise my game on CSS/HTML, graphic design, etc. and probably had a bigger impact on my side projects than it did on my work.

I put in this work as well. It's not about "burden" but cost. Clearly there is a cost here (your time). I don't mind spending the time, but that doesn't mean it costs nothing.

Now multiply this times every web app in existence and the cost is quite large. A lot of this could be avoided with a better platform.

Re: Please stop disabling zoom

#100
post #2

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 just constant. I know I am an oddball but I use firefox, which at this point is basically unsupported online. Pages just _dont_ work right. Of course my 600 extensions, from tridactyl(vim kb) to no script tend to break even more.

But it frustrates me to no end that a browser is no longer a "User" Agent and is now just seen as a... virtual machine for apps?

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