I was under the impression, that the units vh and vw deal with mobile browser zooming in, but apparently that's not the case and I think I am beginning to understand why. Zooming in does not change the viewport at all, but merely shows the user only a part of the viewport, despite the name viewport. Basically there is a difference between what you can see and the viewport. I don't know if distinguishing those two really makes sense, but that's how it seems to be.
The question is: How else do I "react" in my stylesheet to zoom changes?
For example, I have some html element with a width and it fits on the screen of a mobile phone. Now the user zooms in (doing that two finger gesture, moving the fingers away from each other). The size of the element should stay the same relative to what the user sees, but text should get bigger, because it might be the reason why the user zooms in. Maybe they couldn't read it before or want a link to be bigger, so that they can click more easily on it.
How would I do such a thing?
I've read about #viewport stuff, but it's not really supported yet and also poses the question, when to use which viewport size, how to make it as fluent as when you use vh and vw on a destop browser? Simple limiting "up to so and so much px of width" won't do. Defining a mathematical function for how much the element changes its size relative to what one can see and how much the text size changes would be great, but is probably not possible to have.
On mobile devices, the text-size-adjust property allows Web authors to control if and how the text-inflating algorithm is applied to the textual content of the element it is applied to.
As this property is non-standard, it must be used prefixed: -moz-text-size-adjust, -webkit-text-size-adjust, and -ms-text-size-adjust.
Browsers on smartphones don't display web pages using the same algorithms as browsers rendering web pages on desktop machines. Instead of laying out the web page at the width of the device screen, they lay it out using a viewport that is much wider than the device screen, usually of 800 or 1000 pixels wide. One of two possible methods is used to map back to the original device coordinates: either a smaller window is then used to display on the device screen only part of what is actually being rendered, or the viewport is stretched to the size of the device.
Its highly experimental though
Related
I'm redesigning my site because looks awful on different resolutions (apart devices), most guides and tutorials rely on % and em than fixed values. I'm still learning this so I'm reading everything around.
Thought this would solve the question with different display sizes but again: we have to craft some more CSS for fix some specific issues.
If I need to add media-queries for extra display sizes, why use % then? Do use % really reduce coding? Is ok need to add some extra css for some sizes or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any advice!
The purpose of using em sizes is to allow the base your design off of the user's choice of font size. I may use a larger font size because I have a huge monitor and poor eye sight, while someone else might prefer a smaller font. By using em units, your design will accommodate both of our font preferences and resize accordingly instead of forcing the font size to a given standard (eg. "12 point font").
In a similar manner, percent (%) units allow your design to respond to different browser sizes. Used in conjunction with em units, this will allow text-based elements to respond to arbitrary font size choices, and layout elements to respond to arbitrary browser sizes.
It is perfectly acceptable to design a single responsive design for all media types. Media queries are intended when you want different display styles on different devices, not to "support" different display sizes. An example would be to use serif fonts on print media and sans-serif fonts on display media, since usabilities studies have shown that these font faces are preferred for these sorts of media.
Furthermore, it allows you to do custom styling for some situations like mobile devices, where you may want to consider that the user has a limited amount of bandwidth and maybe cut down on extra images. Or if you want to display your content in a completely different layout for the microscopic screen afforded by certain phones.
% allows your site to be responsive to the user's method of viewing. Let's say you have a div that's at 100%. It'll fill the entire section, regardless if it's on a phone or desktop.
It should be okay to add extra CSS for sizes as well. As far as I know, you can have some elements display in % and some with a fixed px value, although they might conflict depending on how the page is setup or what it is being viewed with.
For example.
Your website header have the width of 950px; But in a mobile device, it may fit at 450px;
So, you use media-query to reposition some elements and handle some size issues and set the header width to 450px;
But, if you use % values, you can set your header div to have 100% of width base in its parent. So you can only change the body or some container div width, the all childs going to adapt.
Diana,
I am glad I came across this question. I literally just uploaded my first responsive design which is 90% based off of percentages when it comes to font-size and widths.
Check out the below:
http://www.noxinnovations.com/portfolio/responsive/
Obviously, it doesn't look amazing, and the image looks way out of place... But do me a favor and resize your browser window, by slowly making it smaller and smaller. I did that by setting a percentage width!
Trust me, I tried doing this responsive design test with pixels, and it didn't turn out too well. The percentage width ensures that regardless of the resolution and or pixel dimensions (per se) the design will always cater to the size of the screen. Also, I did not have to use one CSS3 Media Query, but I would highly suggest using CSS3 Media Queries only when you need them.
In my opinion, I should probably have a Media Query for a larger screen.
I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me!
Thank you,
Aaron
What is the best way to dynamically change the width and height of an HTML5 video within a webpage? The kind of behaviour I'm referring to is the same thing in the intro video of http://flipboard.com/
When the window is resized, the video still takes up 100% of the viewable size (without scrolling). I noticed that the video gets resized to a certain degree, but stops resizing and gets cropped at some point.
What is the best way to get the same behaviour? I want to have a video take up the entire viewable area of the browser without scroll bars. This is only on a desktop/laptop, I am not considering any mobile devices ATM.
What I have in mind right now is to dynamically change the width/height properties of the video to fit the viewable area using javascript, but also set a minimum size such that the video doesn't get distorted. The video can be placed in a container that is always centered, so if the browser gets to a size that is too small, it effectively gets cropped. I'm not sure if this is too long-winded and if there is an easier way.
Thank you.
It looks like they have the css properties of height and width set to 100%. If you use an element inspector like the one built into chrome or firebug for Firefox, you should be able to see exactly how they structured the html/css for the video element as well as the div its nested in. Then, as you said, also set a min-width/min-height property.
Unless I'm misreading your question, it should be that simple. Hope this helps!
you could do it with "Responsive CSS", there are some ways to do that,
you could set the viewport, max-width, min-width, etc.
This link have a nice explanation how to do that : http://kyleschaeffer.com/best-practices/responsive-layouts-using-css-media-queries/
The w3c specification says that the width and height are implied and not required. I have always been told that you're supposed to put it in anyway. If I remember correctly his reason was that the browser may not correctly detect the image size. Is this true?
It harkens back to the dark days of Netscape in the v4 and older versions. The rendering engines were primitive and wouldn't "reflow" content as they built pages and figured out sizes. If you didn't specify an image size, the whole page's rendering would get paused (or a full-page refresh would get pulled) once the image was downloaded and parsed for height/width. This looked bad from a user perspective, so the rule was to ALWAYS specify a size.
Nowadays, engines are better, and can handle an unspecified image size gracefully. Reflowing content is still a somewhat expensive operation, but does look cool from a user perspective as things glide/flow around as images pop in and text shifts to accomodate them.
The reason is that if you do not put them in, the browser will put a default size in, download the image, find the actual size then have to re-flow everything around the new size.
Re-flows are expensive operations - the rendering on screen has to be updated for each such image.
If you provide the size, the browser puts in a placeholder with the correct size and doesn't have to re-flow once the image downloads.
In my experience, not supplying width and height tags will cause the browser to render the image at its original size.
I've found this behaviour to be consistent in modern browsers.
As an aside, I always try to supply images at the size I want them rendered at in order to reduce the amount of bandwidth used and to ensure image quality.
I'm not sure about browsers not detecting it correctly, I've never seen that happen.
But to answer your question, I think the answer depends more on what you are trying to do, and possibly likely to do, which makes the difference.
For example, if the image you are adding is a banner ad which needs to conform to predetermined height/width, then by all means, hard code the height and width.
But if the image is something that might change over time, I would suggest NOT coding the height and width, as more than likely this means that the new image, if not the same exact height/width as the old one, will now be distorted. This is especially true on a dynamic website where images change all the time.
When creating a web-site design, is the only real option to provide a fixed content width?
I notice most major websites (this one included) center all the content into a fixed width, which ensures all elements look correct on all screen sizes.
I think I already know the answer to this, but a colleague seems to think that there should never be a horizontal scrollbar and a website should resize to the users screen width. I make the argument that text can resize but other elements can’t (buttons, textboxes etc), so a fixed width is the only option.
I'd love your opinions each way.
Surely fixed width is the only way you can guarantee the correct layout on ALL browsers?
You can get clever with floats/media queries to make layouts work well at narrower widths.
But it is indeed more common to go with a fixed width:
It’s easier to design
Not many people have narrow monitors these days — most websites seem to assume they’ve got 1000 pixels of horizontal space to work with, and I haven’t heard of them getting many complaints
Touch-based OSs (iOS, Android et. al) make zooming web pages feel very natural, so pixel dimensions aren't quite as important there.
When lines of content get too wide (I think more than around 60 words?), they get difficult to read, so there’s not much advantage to be gained from having elements expand to full width for users who have bigger browser windows.
I think the most likely group of users to have less horizontal space available is smartphone users, and you’re going to want a specific design for them if you care that much about their experience.
Oh, just one thing though: “Surely fixed width is the only way you can guarantee the correct layout on ALL browsers?” With the greatest possible respect, that’s a bit of a programmer’s way to think about it. You can’t guarantee anything about web page rendering. Browsers and operating systems can do whatever they want. That’s the web. Let it go.
Dynamic-width web-sites are generally composed of one or many percentage-width blocks which make 100% total. So blocks size change with resolution or browser resizing, but if total width is too short it can occure lisibility problems, so a minimal width is specified for <body>, in which case a horizontal scrollbar appears.
But you can think differently : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/14/will-horizontal-layouts-return/.
I tend to make my websites have a minimum width for legibility, but otherwise the width is determined as a percentage of the window size (I normally pick 80%).
I find this gives me ample coverage of the viewport, whilst still looking good on larger monitors.
I find this approach fails on larger screens when there is little content, as the content tends to get stretched into a line at the top of the page, which can make things confusing. So for those pages it can be good to have a fixed width, centred style.
No. A thousand times no.
If your website presents any kind of body text, fixed width is an abomination from the depths of the mid-90s, forcing readers to scroll like crazy, while being mocked by vast expanses of unused screen space to either size. (Now, a variable number of columns I might buy.)
BTW: flag for CW.
Horizontal scrollbars are a big problem. A properly designed website should be able to scale down to be used on small resolution screens (640x480). Also, it's nice to have to have my browser window maximized just to browse a site. Also, there's no reason why a person with a high resolution monitor shouldn't be able to use the extra space their monitor gives them.
Shouldn't we use "Pixel" for anything in CSS if we are making a site for mobile devices?
px for layout and font. Should we only use em or % for everything on mobile sites?
and if i'm using <img> then should i defined height and width for <img> in HTML code? or it's good to not to define. or i should define size in css for <img> also in % or em
Edit:
Note: Question is not again about px vs em debate My question is specifically for separate mobile site. when we are making separate mobile site with different domain or sub-domain.
Everything depends on the context. Like with CSS for desktop browsers, there are situations where using pixels is not a good idea (for example mostly for font sizes), and there are situations where pixels are still very useful (for example fixed layout).
In general, avoid using pixels every-time you don't need to. For example, there is no reason to do it for fonts: it's not you, but the user who chooses if the font must be big on a high-res screen or not. Using percentages also helps you somehow to remember that a piece of text can never have an exact width and height, and force you to adapt your design.
Now, sometimes, for cost or other reasons, you have to do fixed layouts, or at least some parts of a page, associating images and text, have to be fixed in size. In this case, there is nothing wrong to use pixels. If I have a <div/> with some text inside and a pretty 200×100px background, the most obvious thing is to set the width and the height of this <div/> to 200 and 100 pixels.
if i'm using <img> then should i defined height and width for <img> in HTML code?
IMHO, you never should do that. The size of an image is purely a layout/design thing, so it has nothing to do with HTML, but with CSS.
Do you have to specify the size of an image in CSS? If you want your image to be displayed 100%, than no, you don't have to: this is by default in every browser. If you want to scale it down and, for some reasons, you can't scale the image itself than save the scaled image on server, than yes, you may want to specify the size of the image.
Remember than sending a big image and scale is down on client side is always a bad idea. The visual quality might be affected, and the client will have to wait more to see the image appear.
Actually, I recommend using different CSS files (and sometimes different templates) for browsers vs. mobile. Mobile isn't just a smaller browser, it is a fundamentally different user experience.
As for the pixel issue, I tend to use pixels in my base CSS rules and then use % or em's everywhere else so that things scale up and down together. It doesn't always work the way I would like, but it normally allows a lot of tweaking during development.