Are there any sorts of desktop tools or browser plugins that are able to simulate various mobile and tablet devices in order to properly test responsive designs? And I'm not just talking about changing the browser window size. Other items would need to be simulated as well:
device-width
min-device-width
max-device-width
orientation (landscape/portrait)
-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio
resolution
ppi
I typically try Opera Mobile Emulator. It's fairly accurate, and will imitate high DPI displays, etc, and will handle most the media queries just fine. Just pick your display characteristics, or a device to emulate, and it will attempt to render in that manner.
Related
I'm trying to build a responsive website for ipad and mobile as well.
This is the Link if you want to check it out.
Anyway, when I use the devTools in chrome for checking out the layouts on the Galaxy S5, then the landscape view is all good. When I check it on the actual device, then the height seems to be a bit less, and some parts of the website are actually cut out. Probably due to some parts of the device not being accounted for in the height.
Screenshot from the chrome dev tools, using the width and height of the S4 mini viewport when in landscape mode:
Screenshot from the actual device in landscape mode
So the questions are:
How do I actually use the devTools in Chrome to get a precise
representation?
Do I need to actually account for browser size in the #media (min-width: whatever px) query?
Is my question wrong from another perspective I haven't considered? Am I missing something?
Is there a way to tell apart devices with media queries other than using the devices with? I find that this is not sufficient enough, as there are mobile devices that have higher resolutions than some desktops (such as the iPad Pro).
So what if I want to show tablet users a different view than desktop users? Is this possible with CSS?
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 have a media query -->#media all AND (max-width: 1024)..which works well on a Samsung tablet, but I need this to only apply on th tablet and not on the pc. If the device is a pc, it should only #media screen and (max-width: 768px).. how do I go about it?
you can not check for the device (pc, tablet, handheld) with media queries, only for the device width (more, i know, but op ask for device-width).
Maybe this article will help you understand more of it?
Media query should never be device specific - you simply say 'for an output of this size do this, but for an output of a different size, do that'. Whether it's a phone, PC, tablet, kiosk, watch or anything else should be irrelevant. For this reason, media query doesn't enable you to query hardware as such.
You may want different behaviour (rather than style) based on device capability, e.g.. is this a 'touch' device? But that should be managed in JS rather than CSS.
What is the actual goal of your query? Does it matter that the CSS is applied to a PC as well as a tablet?
The short answer: you don't.
The longer answer: you're going about it the wrong way.
It's easy to fall into the trap of using screen widths to target specific devices, but that's an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. Why? Because the widths of mobile devices overlap with the widths of desktops.
For example, here are a list of screen widths, can you guess which ones are desktop?
1024
1366
1200
1080
Guess what? I bet you're wrong about your guesses. 1024 and up seems like a "desktop" resolution, but iPhone 5 Retina is 1136x640, and the 3rd generation iPad is 2048x1536. To make things even more complicated, many people on desktops don't keep their browsers maximized, so device width does not equate to browser width. And what happens on the Kindle, which has a higher resolution, but also increases the text size?
And more devices are coming to the market on a regular basis.
So, your best bet? Abandon the idea of targeting specific devices or device classes altogether. If you absolutely have to, use JavaScript to look for touch screens (as that's the most likely reason you need to adjust the interface specifically for a class of devices).
You can still use media queries to target widths (or better yet, in my experience, use proportional media queries), but don't expect it to necessarily work on a given device.
I've been using min-width: 600px as my breakpoint in my CSS media queries. My rationale was that at 600px and above I'd capture tablet devices (Kindle Fire, iPad, etc) and below 600px would capture all of phone devices.
It turns out that while the iPhone plays nice by doubling its pixels, but still reporting being 320px x 480px, there are a ton of Android phones out there with resolutions like 700px x 1280px. The trouble is, how do I capture these devices without giving them a tablet-like interface?
Normally I'd just let the content respond to the pixel resolution of the device, however, a 1280px layout on a 4.3in screen just doesn't look right, especially since my application deals with a lot of form elements, which on a phone you want to span the entire width, but on a tablet or desktop you do not.
One good option is to tailor your media queries to your content, not arbitrary device pixel sizes, by using ems.
Please use responsive css framework to avoid this kind of problem. I would suggest using Foundation or Twitter Bootstrap