How to Troubleshoot media queries on different browsers? - css

I have a website (http://www.sealinesd.com) that works just fine most of the time...but sometimes the browser (Firefox and Chrome) will determine the wrong screen size and show the site wrong. The same computer will show it differently on two different browsers: one browser will determine that the screen is 960-1240 and the other will correctly see that it's over 1240. I can't figure this out. Anybody have some good tools for troubleshooting this issue, or better yet, know what the problem might be?

OK, I figured it out. Some of my browsers had a tiny bit of zoom magnification. That was screwing up how the browser pixel size was read because browser zoom basically stretches the pixels: 200% zoom on a 1024x768 screen will be read as a 612x384 screen. I changed the media queries in CSS to use ems instead of pixels and that fixed the issue. If you have this issue, just go into your style sheet and change the pixels to ems by dividing pixels by 16 and adding "em" to the end instead of "px".
Example: "#media only screen and (min-width:960px) and (max-width:1240px) {"
WOULD BECOME "#media only screen and (min-width: 60em) and (max-width: 77em) {"
Now users can zoom without changing the query because em (the length of the letter "m") is a measurement that is based on the text size, which is changing proportionally to the page.

Related

Appropriately sized fonts on any device

I am currently attempting to get a website to display some plain text with appropriate font sizes on both a desktop and mobile browser. Trying to choose a font size for both results in the text being too large on desktops and too small on mobile because of the different displays.
I have attempted using a media query to change the font size based off of the screen width.
#media screen and (max-width: 900px) {
body {
font-size: 2em;
}
}
This "works", but it comes with the caveat that resizing a browser window on a desktop will result in changing the font size if the width goes to or below 900px. I never want the font size to respond dynamically to the browser size. It should always stay the same size regardless of any window resizing that occurs. I will not consider vh and vw as solutions because of this requirement.
While searching around for solutions, I came across using dpi in media queries as an alternative. Since I assume the vast majority of mobile devices have a higher dpi than most desktop monitors, that could be a good way to change the font size on mobile.
#media screen and (min-resolution: 150dpi) {
body {
font-size: 2em;
}
}
But what if there is a monitor that does surpass this dpi? This works for the 3 devices I am testing with, but I cannot be sure that it will work in more cases.
Overall, my aim is to get something like the setup Wikipedia has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch The font size does not change when resizing the browser, it displays at a readable size consistently on both mobile and desktop browsers, and I assume it will work quite nicely on a high dpi monitor as well, but I have no way of testing that.
So what is the appropriate way to get the functionality I am looking for?
After writing this question but before posting, I kept on searching for a solution and I found it. It's actually very simple, but easy to miss. I hope posting this helps others in the future. It all boils down to this line within the head of the html.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>
It's explained nicely here.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag
Average font-size for resizing screen you can get by using stylesheet calculator and properties like:
vh - viewport height
vw - viewport width.
Your font size will take same size on your view, but it can be unreadable if you don't handle small sizes layout.
For regular size: font-size: calc(.5vh + .8vw);
For large size: font-size: calc(5vh + 5vw);

Site scaling on a mobile device

Im a total newbie as far as mobile devices are concerned. Anyhow, i created a webpage (still under construction) and implemented it on the existing wp theme called govpress (yes, i know it might not be the most practical way to make things happen but with my coding skills it was the easiest). Now i just cant get it working correctly with mobile devices. I havent found the code that makes it behave as it does. So, on a mobile it seems to scale the page to screen width resolution of the device(?). Also the background and the header div (full width) scales to device screen width. And even if i zoom out it doesnt enlarge the bg nor the header div. Is it the theme that has this behavior somewhere coded or is it somewhere in the css..!? Heeeelp, please!!!
Find the site on http://www.lifespectrum.eu
And heres my css: http://lifespectrum.eu/wp-content/themes/govpress/style.css
(lots of thrash there though)
Please ask if you need anything else!
Thanks in advance!
The scaling is done in the css file via media queries. Adjust these statements accordingly to make the background/header do what you want:
#media screen and (max-width: 840px)
#media screen and (max-device-width: 680px)
#media screen and (max-width: 480px)
Mobile behaviors are CSS. Your last CSS codes #media screen and (max-device-width: 680px) are doing this behavior. You can easily check your responsive style just by making your desktop window screen smaller and larger. By doing this, you can easily see that your logo header is responsive but your body content is staying the same.
I would inspect element on the body and do the same as you did with the .logo You can preview your changes by editing right in the inspect element with chrome (right-click & inspect element) just to see how it'll look.
It looks like your background/header are the only elements that have css written to resize them in the media queries cfnerd listed.
The content area has the classes you need to adjust settings for in the media queries at different widths. For example, you have .topwhite and .top divs set in the css to a static width of 810px. Once the window width is smaller than 810px those will give you the nasty horizontal scrolling bars. One quick fix is to set them as a
width:100%;
max-width:810px;
so that at most they can go to the original size you set but as the device or window width gets smaller the size of those divs will shrink along with it. That will only help you with the containers, you will have to also add new css settings for the contents as well. But you can use the same idea.
You may need to implement the viewport mets tag. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag

Stop Firefox DPI Scaling (when Windows setting is at 125%)

I'm currently making a webpage and testing it in chrome works fine, but in Firefox - it is zoomed in.
This is because my DPI in Windows is set to 125%, and Firefox detects this, and adjusts every webpage accordingly.
However, my webpage is not meant to be viewed at such a zoom level, the images aren't made to be displayed that big, and hence it looked blurred/pixelated. The general layout of the page is messed up too, because everything is so big.
Now, this doesn't affect most people - as their DPI would be at 100% in Windows. However, I want it to be the same on all browsers.
I've searched and have found solutions as for the user to disable this "feature" - but I want to be able to disable it from my website - so it doesn't look wrong to the user in the first place.
e.g. one post says:
1) Type about:config in address bar
2) search for layout.css.devPixelsPerPx
3) change value of layout.css.devPixelsPerPx from -1.0 to 1.0
But that isn't what I'm looking for.
Is there any way to disable this from CSS/HTML/anything?
Thanks.
You could easily let your website address users with settings at higher zoom levels by including a media query like:
#media only screen and( -webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25 ),
only screen and( -o-min-device-pixel-ratio: 5/4 ),
only screen and( min-resolution: 120dpi ),
only screen and( min-resolution: 1.25dppx ) {
body {
font-size: 1rem;
}
}
See this article for an extended explanation and why the cleaned up solution of the media query is sufficient for a broad browser support: IE9+, Fx3.5+, Opera9.5+, Webkit Browsers Chrome and Safari, both Desktop and Mobile.
Your could try something like this below. There are some caveats using this, but for some situations
it is worth using it.
#media screen and (min-resolution: 120dpi) {
/*body {transform: scale(0.8);width: 125%;height: 125%;margin-left: -12.5%;}*/
body {transform: scale(0.8);transform-origin:top left;width: 125%;height: 125%;}
}
Commented /*body....*/ example scale may be easier to understand yet worse, f.e. because
scaling should be done based on transform-origin css rule top left edge. Then things can be rendered better especially in Chrome.
if you use width: 125%, your RWD css should react differently to changing browser sizes on account of this from what you expected when screen ratio was 100%.
And you might reasonably accept this - this is RWD and the difference is 25%. But some people might want to adapt their css like this:
#media screen and (min-width: 1000px)
you also need to adjust:
#media screen and (min-width: 800px)
probably not 1250px but 800px like I did.
Edge, Chrome, FF do pretty good. IE 11 rendered the worst yet not hopelessly.
There are some problems in FF (not edge, chrome) when expanding select fields - solution css select.
Some borders can can be visible some dissapear on FF (maybe not edge, chrome)
There can be some issues not mentioned here like when you use carousel like owlcarousel on your page.
Yet I think it is greater probability to save more time with this example tested still too little.
You have to use exact scaling like 0.8 for 125% screen for your images to be rendered as sharp as possible.
I noticed that when switching to different dpi resolutions using ctrl +/i in a desktop browser and for sure using multitouch gestures in mobile browsers, a browser changes dpi too, so any solution using #media min/max-resolution may not work as expected. What is needed in css is to read system resolution not a browser. However as i see this resolution change doesn't take place like then when someone changes browser size manually or by rotating a mobile device.
Thank you Tatsuyuki Ishi for correcting some errors of my answer.
This frustrated me too, but luckily there is a solution.
Navigate to about:config. (Click accept on any warnings telling you to be careful with advanced features)
Search for layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and change its value to 1.0 and your issue should be fixed.
It was something implemented in Firefox 22.
I did this way, zoom works better than transform, it doesn't make fixed elements absolute:
#media screen and (min-resolution: 120dpi) {
body {zoom: 0.8;}
}
Set it to 1.25: that keeps the user interface larger, but resets the website to 100% pixel mapping.

iPad 2: problems with correct menu display

I have problems with correct display of some parts of my header on Ipad 2 (social icons in the right top corner)
Here's my site: link
And here you can see how it looks on Ipad:
link
I tested my site on different mobile devices emulators and it looks very well. In reality icons are moved to the bottom of the header and whole header is stretched.
I can't figure it what's wrong. I'd be grateful for some help.
Mobile Safari (like Chrome for Android, Mobile Firefox and IE Mobile) increases the font size of wide blocks (at all times), such that if you double-tap to zoom in on that block (which fits the block to the screen width), the text will be legible. If you set -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100% (or none), it won't be able to do this, and so when a user double-taps to zoom in on wide blocks the text will be illegibly small; users will be able to read it if they pinch-zoom in, but then the text will be wider than the screen and they'll have to pan horizontally to read each line of text!
Ideally you would fix this by using Responsive Web Design techniques to make your design adapt to mobile screen sizes (in which case you would no longer have any very wide blocks, so mobile browsers would no longer adjust your font sizes).
Finally if you really need to prevent Mobile Safari from adjusting your font sizes you can set -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%, but do this only as a last resort since it is likely to cause mobile users to have difficulty reading your text, as it'll either be too small or they'll have to pan from side to side after every line they read. Note that you must use 100% not none because none has nasty side-effects in desktop browsers. There are also equivalent -moz-text-size-adjust and -ms-text-size-adjust properties for Mobile Firefox and IE Mobile.
Edit: for example in your case the simplest is probably the 2nd alternative, so you could try adding the following CSS:
/* Mobile browsers only */
#media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
.newsletter_input {
width: 320px;
}
.newsletter_input #form{
font-size:42pt
}
}
Though it's not ideal to hardcode 320px like this; you could improve on that by using a variety of CSS media queries, or getting the device-width from JavaScript.

Responsive Web Design for Background-Image

I've found StackOverflow extremely useful so thanks for any help in advance.
On http://test2.heyscout.com/, I'm wondering how to properly set up my background-image in my "hero div" for responsive web design. I've been playing around with numerous settings but I'd like it to:
stay in position consistently without jumping around due to browser size (for example, on the mobile phone, it gets misaligned or there's white space where there shouldn't be)
the 'Verify Anyone Offline' doesn't resize properly even though I set it in em
the button looks strange on a mobile device
What is the best practice for keeping the "hero div" in check? I'd surmise it'd have to do something with the min-height or perhaps fixing the dimensions of the actual image. Should I set the height of the hero div in percentage rather than pixels?
Also any advice on how to keep my "trimester div" fill up nicely the bottom 1/3 of the page consistently would be great- I'd imagine when the height of the browser is bigger than expected, it'd look strange. I've read that it's best to keep the height attribute alone for RWD but I'm wondering if there are any tricks to make sure it resizes properly.
Have you looked into Media Queries? Basically, they allow you to set specific CSS based on browser width (and height). This will allow you to control how your page looks at specific browser sizes.
Example - CSS at different widths:
#media screen and (max-width: 600px) {
/* add some CSS here for 600px maximum width*/
}
#media screen and (max-width: 960px) {
/* add some CSS here for 960px maximum width*/
}
To get the background image to always fill the div, use background-size: cover2 unless you need to support IE8.
If your font size doesn't look right across pc/tablet/handheld, try using media queries to set font sizes for specific resolutions.
I'm not sure how to help you with your button "looking strange", except to offer profuse sympathy.
In the future, try to keep your questions more focused. :)
give
background-size:contain;
and this may solve your problem, because it will auto adjust size by contain!

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