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Does anyone else have this experience - The "old" pre-mobile phone style sites that were written without any "mobile experience" in mind are actually the most p

Does anyone else have this experience - The "old" pre-mobile phone style sites that were written without any "mobile experience" in mind are actually the most pleasant and easy to use on a phone (with just some extra zoom needed sometimes) while the mobile version of countless sites are actually the worst? Ironic isn't it.

caleb-allen 3y ago
I mean, HTML was originally invented as an interchange format so that the client could adapt it back into whatever form was suitable.
corytheboyd 3y ago
Not really, the constant zooming is pretty awkward. I know this is the wrong opinion to have on HN, but at least having the content scale to the viewport appropriately is a much nicer experience. Don’t get me wrong either, this is still a much much better mobile experience than popover garbage and JS dynamic wank.
- bigyikes 3y ago
  Agree. The website is not usable with one thumb on mobile. Maybe language models will bring back the concept of a “user agent”. One could imagine feeding a GPT the source for this page and receiving mobile-friendly source as output. I’m looking forward to the day where the AI screens all markup rendered in my browser. (Let’s not think of how power inefficient this would be…)
  - corytheboyd 3y ago
    That's certainly one way to add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> :p
williamdclt 3y ago
I really don’t have this experience. I’d say these old-school sites are _not the worst_, and that _some_ mobile version of some websites manage to do worse. But it’s not a particularly pleasant experience, no
gsich 3y ago
This site is perfectly usable on mobile, without even trying to be "mobile first"-garbage.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
It's in part because old displays had a screen resolution 640x480 or 800x600 back in the 90's, only a little more than phone displays (375x667 for something like an iphone SE, but at higher pixel densities). Since the 90's, desktops went to 1024, 1920 / HD is mainstream now, and 3840 / 4K is on the rise for desktop.
aimor 3y ago
I wish I could, on mobile Firefox, force the viewport or at least easily change it. <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

caleb-allen 3y ago

I mean, HTML was originally invented as an interchange format so that the client could adapt it back into whatever form was suitable.

corytheboyd 3y ago

Not really, the constant zooming is pretty awkward. I know this is the wrong opinion to have on HN, but at least having the content scale to the viewport appropriately is a much nicer experience. Don’t get me wrong either, this is still a much much better mobile experience than popover garbage and JS dynamic wank.

bigyikes 3y ago
Agree. The website is not usable with one thumb on mobile. Maybe language models will bring back the concept of a “user agent”. One could imagine feeding a GPT the source for this page and receiving mobile-friendly source as output. I’m looking forward to the day where the AI screens all markup rendered in my browser. (Let’s not think of how power inefficient this would be…)
- corytheboyd 3y ago
  That's certainly one way to add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> :p

williamdclt 3y ago

I really don’t have this experience. I’d say these old-school sites are _not the worst_, and that _some_ mobile version of some websites manage to do worse. But it’s not a particularly pleasant experience, no

gsich 3y ago

This site is perfectly usable on mobile, without even trying to be "mobile first"-garbage.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

It's in part because old displays had a screen resolution 640x480 or 800x600 back in the 90's, only a little more than phone displays (375x667 for something like an iphone SE, but at higher pixel densities). Since the 90's, desktops went to 1024, 1920 / HD is mainstream now, and 3840 / 4K is on the rise for desktop.

aimor 3y ago

I wish I could, on mobile Firefox, force the viewport or at least easily change it. <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">