When it comes to using media queries, I see max-width and max-device-width used a lot to target "small screen" devices, or smartphones, but why not use the media query for resolution?
For example, #media screen and (min-resolution: 230dpi) allows me to write CSS to target some smartphones, such as the Galaxy S Glide SGH I927R, which has 480 x 800 pixels, 4 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)
Conversely, I would have to use #media screen and (max-device-width: 480px) and (orientation: portrait) plus #media screen and (max-device-width: 800px) and (orientation: landscape).
It seems that min-resolution would save me some time. I have read several articles and blogs, but I do not see anyone advocating for resolution.
There must be an obvious point that I am missing - I am not a professional web designer - but what is "wrong" with the approach of using resolution? What makes width or device-width better to target "small screens."
My favorite site so far on width vs device-width has been:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/dhtmltutors/cssmediaqueries.shtml
Maybe the reason that I had to use a max-device-width of 800px, which seemed "excessive" for smartphones to me is because I did not use the meta tag viewport. I read in the article above on page 3 the following:
"It means that our CSS media queries will match the dimensions of the "zoomed out" device's, and not its actual (ie: 980px for device-width on the iPhone instead of 320px). So whenever you're optimizing a webpage for mobile devices, the first step is to define a particular META tag on your page to alter/ disable the "zoom in" behaviour of mobile browsers..."
Perhaps after defining the viewport, the max-device-width would make more sense than using Resolution in the media queries?
Chris Coyier with CSS-Tricks.com and Jamie Bicknell of Rentedsmile Web Design put together a great article on the CSS-Tricks website.
I will summarize their main points and post a link to the article at the bottom.
The most popular analytics software in the world is Google Analytics which is why most of us are so concerned about resolution. Unfortunately this does not account for browser window size which is the only item to account for when many of us are using 27" screens, multiple screens, 40+ devices, and frankly, what percentage of people ever use the full window? I know I don't.
Chris Coyier points out only ~61% of users view within 200px of full screen meaning if you are 'pixel-perfect' then in the eyes of your consumer -- you are not. Your website will most likely be broken. (An estimated 0.85% using full screen)
This means screen resolution is totally irrelevant to the cause which are our end-users.
See the full article here for their complete breakdown and illustration-rich analysis
http://css-tricks.com/screen-resolution-notequalto-browser-window/
Related
Consider two screens:
same resolution
same orientation
but different physical sizes
Exempla gratia:
How can i target different screen sizes with CSS media queries?
Because, for example:
for the one 1920px wide display, it is uncomfortable to read the long lines of text that stretch edge-to-edge, and you'd want some padding, margin, or other spacing to narrow the text
but for the other 1920px wide display, you want text to go edge-to-edge
Bonus Chatter
And you can't try to invoke User-Agent strings:
i'm asking about CSS media queries, not User-Agent strings
the 4" screen could be connected to a PC
the 18" screen could be connected to a phone.
And you can't try to weasel out of the question by talking about orientation, or by musing if the screen supports touch or not, nor can you use the handheld attribute
I'm asking about using CSS to style a page based on the (physical) size of the screen.
Bonus Reading
Detect if a browser in a mobile device (iOS/Android phone/tablet) is used (tries to rely on resolution)
Media Queries: How to target desktop, tablet, and mobile? (tries to rely on resolution)
How To Build A Mobile Website
How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website
Using Media Queries For Responsive Design In 2018
What media query breakpoints should I use? (tries to rely on resolution) ("breakpoints" is another word for "pixels")
Media Query for Large Desktop
CSS media queries for handheld and not small browser screens
Media query about screen size instead of resolution
Well a typical media query for this would use min-width or max-width to hide or show things depending on display size. This is dependent on a <meta> tag which tells the browser to use the physical width of the display as the viewport width rather than using the resolution of the display as the viewport width.
For example:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>
and
#media all and (max-width: 600px)
{
/*Put your mobile styles here*/
}
It's not a perfect solution and doesn't really account for touch interfaces for tablets or other larger mobile displays, but it's a good place to start for building mobile user interfaces.
It's important to emphasize that this is intended for displays in which the content is scaled. I know for fact that most modern mobile devices use scaling (2x/3x on iOS and xhdpi/xxhdpi on Android), but it should also work with Windows scaling, though I'm not 100% sure on that and don't have a way to test it at the moment.
These media queries can accept any CSS unit as well, so you could very well use actual inches if you wish.
#media all and (max-width: 3.5in) { /* ... */ }
I'd like to try to work out a method of adaptive webpage design to coexist with both mobile and desktop browsers.
At first it looked like using Media Queries in CSS was what I needed, so I went with that, but it looks like Google Chrome is messing up what I wanted to do.
Compared to most browsers, for the most part only mobile browsers respond to the orientation media query, which seemed to be a good way to target a mobile browser, no matter the screen size. However, for some reason, Google Chrome not only responds to this, but will actually select Landscape and Portrait depending on the dimensions of the viewport (the window itself) and has nothing to do with the position of the screen itself.
This brought me to another potential idea. I noticed that on my mobile devices, device-width and device-height will swap positions depending on landscape and portrait modes, while Google Chrome on a desktop always reports the monitor's proper dimensions, even when Chrome thinks the window size qualifies as Portrait mode.
What I'm hoping to do is figure out a way to make a media query that determines if the device-width is greater than device-height. This should allow me to determine the true orientation of the screen, regardless of viewport size and Chrome's orientation value.
My eventual goal is to be able to design a page with a specifically mobile-friendly layout for any device that reports Orientation: Portrait AND the Device-Width is less than Device-Height, which should only ever happen on a true mobile device in portrait mode (or the rare sideways PC monitor, which I don't mind accidently targetting), while serving a landscape/desktop friendly layout to any device with a screen that is wider than it is tall.
I am adamantly avoiding using any form of Javascript, useragent query, or server-side scripting to accomplish this. Media Queries seem to be the fastest and least costly (processing wise) method to have a page that actively shapes itself to the current device and will also shift its position in real-time as the mobile device rotates between orientations.
My ultimate question for this post is: Can I specify some form of expression in a media query in CSS that will simply compare the Device-Width and Device-Height and display one style when the width is greater than height, and vice versa?
Something like:
#media screen and (device-width > device-height) //true landscape mode
#media screen not (device-width > device-height) //true portrait mode or square screen
After some tweaking and testing, I came up with the following combination of media queries that seem to do what I'm trying to accomplish.
#media only screen and (orientation: landscape) and (min-device-aspect-ratio: 1/1)
//This targets any screen that is in true Landscape orientation, including desktop browsers. This should also target square screens where the browser reports landscape orientation.
#media only screen and (orientation: portrait) and (min-device-aspect-ratio: 1/1)
//This targets strictly desktop browsers that have a window resized into what the browser considers "portrait" mode. This works in Chrome, Firefox, and MS Edge (haven't tested others). More specifically, this targets any browser that reports portrait mode, but where the screen is actually in landscape position. This may also target square screens where the browser reports portrait orientation.
#media only screen and (orientation: portrait) and (max-device-aspect-ratio: 1/1)
//This strictly targets devices that are actually in portrait orientation, mainly mobile devices (although it may target desktops with rotated monitors)
This may also target square screens reported to be in portrait mode, so you may need an additional query that targets exactly square screens.
I'm happy that you got the way to do what you where looking for, but I think readers should take in account a couple of things:
First, as you said, Monitors can also rotate, in fact is very common in offices to see that kind of monitors.
Second, in mobile you can also have a Landscape viewport in Portrait orientation or viceversa, as you can split the screen in two.
Third, devices such as the Pixel 2XL and iPhone X have a proportion of 18:9 and 19.5:9 respectively, which means that half screen will return Landscape.
Finally, what really matters is the viewport orientation because is what determines the content area, whether is a desktop or a mobile screen. If you resize your desktop window you should also thing about doing some responsive to optimise your available space.
As bonus, in iPhone width referes to viewport while device-width refers to the screen width, which, unlike Android, is always the larger side of the screen.
I'd love to have an easy answer to your question, but there is not. Doing responsive is not easy. Maybe this article (EN) can help you. It gives some clues to split between Desktop vs Laptop, Laptop vs Tablet and Tablet vs Mobile.
I am trying to get to grips with media queries for different devices. I have tried my new Sony Xperia Z mobile and displays in full scale site format due to the high resolution. How do I add a media query to re-size a grid and format like a standard mobiles scale? On the Xperia the font is also too small to read and needs to show bigger. Is this a problem for retina devices that act like full size monitor displays?
Xperia Z - resolution 1920 × 1080, PPI 443
How do I include media queries for such devices?
This code targets all devices with the same pixel ratio, which is actually what you need.
#media screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio:3) {
body {font-size: 250%}
}
Here is a list of devices and their device-pixel-ratio:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1N_eJYR_topuk3xmrOeNhYEsST_LAJikGKKzOQ2o
Yes, it would be a problem for "retina devices that act like full size monitor displays." They would be violating CSS. But since -webkit-device-pixel-ratio works for you, it sounds like this is caused by something else.
You probably omitted this:
The viewport meta tag is used in modern "mobile" browsers. (iOS/Safari, Android/Chrome, Mobile Firefox, Opera). It lets developers say "this is a properly-designed website, not desktop-specific crud". Without it, the mobile browsers assume your website is designed with an unspecified min-width, somewhere around 960 pixels.
When I say "pixel", I mean "CSS pixel". We've established that your CSS pixels are 3 physical "device pixels" on a side. And this means the largest dimension on your device works out at 640 CSS pixels. This is much less 960, so "desktop" webpages - which are assumed in the absence of a viewport meta tag - will start off zoomed out.
`#media only screen and (max-device-width: 1920px) {
/* define mobile specific styles come here */
}
#media only screen and (max-device-width: 640px) {
/* define mobile specific styles come here FOR I PHONE RETENA DISPLAY*/
}`
I wrote some CSS code to make an HTML page fit better in mobile browsers. To be sure that my CSS apply only on mobiles, I use to following media query :
#media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)
As an iPhone developer, I tested on this device and it works really well. But I want my CSS to be use on all kind of devices (Android, Windows Phone, etc).
What would be a good resolution that would fit most of smartphone of these days? Or do I need a more complex media query?
Recently I started to work with Responsive Web Design and Media Queries, I didn't find a unique "magic" query, but after reading a lot of articles and a couple of books, I've adopted the Mobile First way to develop web pages, and I'm using some common Media Queries, here the breakpoints:
320 px Mobile portrait
480 px Mobile landscape
600 px Small tablet
768 px Tablet portrait
1024 px Tablet landscape/Netbook
1280 px & greater — Desktop
(Taken from http://fluidbaselinegrid.com/)
Hope it helps
Updated: Mars 2016
Projects are all different, so it's hard to set a global rule that will fit them all. If you're looking for one, here's an example that someone smarter than me came up with and that I've used before:
xsmall: (max-width: 479px),
small: (max-width: 599px),
medium: (max-width: 767px),
large: (max-width: 1024px),
largeOnly: (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1024px),
xxl: (min-width: 1200px),
tall: (min-height: 780px),
Note the lack of references to devices, screen sizes or orientation on their names. The size of a 'tablet portrait' shouldn't really matter to us as we should try to make things responsive and look good on any screen size, not simply adaptive to a few screen sizes.
Yes, it's important to know the most common screen sizes and avoid crazy media queries, but in the end, your design may start to beg for adjustments at 530px instead of 480px or something like that. So why not?
Now, on my personal preferences: I keep media queries in mind all the time, but at first I tend to ignore device sizes almost completely. I also prefer the desktop-first approach cause I find it easier to adjust layouts to smaller sizes (ie.: removing not so important things from the page, reducing sizes, etc.).
Original Answer
Some people tend to ignore device sizes completely. They say you should check where your layout starts to break and create media queries only when necessary. Others will check for different device sizes, as you're doing now. But then you'll have a media query for 320px, another for 480px, and so on... You may go crazy with that, and maybe it's not even necessary depending on your layout!
So, for now I'm trying to do both. I tend to ignore device sizes at first and will create some media queries only when necessary (when layout breaks), until it looks good for sizes like 960px and bigger, and also for smaller screen sizes, like 320px (the smallest device size I care about).
Will the following media queries behave exactly same on mobile devices and computers or there's any difference?
#media only screen and (max-width: 480px),
screen and (max-device-width: 480px){
...
}
and
#media (max-width: 480px) {
..
}
No, they will not. This is because device-width is not the same as width. If your media query has just width they'll behave the same, but when you introduce device-width you'll get different results. Refer to my response to this question for more info: CSS stylesheet that targets iPhone iPad not working
Media Queries themselves will behave the same. But when they query different things, they're likely to get different answers.
"only screen" usually works, but a small number of mobile devices classify themselves as 'handheld' rather than 'screen'. (My personal inclination is "only all" is better, partly because it includes handheld and partly because it provides the same CSS to print and presentation [i.e. projectors] too.)
For a first approximation, min/max-width is the logical current window (which may have been set by the user), while min/max-device-width is the physical screen. But many mobile devices will not return what you read in their sales specs for screen size. Many of them include a concept of a "viewport" ...something you can modify (with <meta name="viewport" content="...), but which usually defaults to something much larger than the actual screen dimensions. Thoroughly understanding the "viewport" will clarify (and possibly answer too) your query.
Also since mobile devices are often viewed at a much closer distance, they need much denser pixels in order to provide an equivalent user experience. (The iPad's "retina" display exemplifies the trend.) As a result of the very high pixel density, small physical dimensions can have notably large pixel dimensions anyway. (My own inclination is to think you'll ultimately have to take density into account in your Media Queries in order to produce really sensible results.)
In any case, for an alternative to Media Queries that keeps the concept but implements it rather differently, you might want to look at http://www.ckollars.org/alternative-to-media-queries.html