5 ms·

Why on earth would you disable pinch zoom on mobile web? It is the most useful feature, it allows the reader to adjust the amount and size of text displayed

by gbog 14y ago

Why on earth would you disable pinch zoom on mobile web? It is the most useful feature, it allows the reader to adjust the amount and size of text displayed. I use it all the time and despise those web apps blocking it. Html is elastic by nature, and html 5 will win over native apps because it is elastic.

untog 14y ago
Pinch to zoom isn't that applicable on mobile-optimised webapps. If you have a fixed header on the top of the page what would pinch to zoom do? Make the header bigger? Or would it ignore the header and just zoom in on the body content?
- rubinelli 14y ago
  This is tangential to the pinch-to-zoom discussion, but I'd say if you have a fixed element anywhere, you don't have a mobile-optmised webapp. There are plenty of Android devices with 640x480 or 320x240 out there; a fixed header in one of them looks like a big waste of screen space.
  - untog 14y ago
    Huh? Do you regard the title bar at the top of native Android apps to also be wasted space?
    - ArtB 14y ago
      I think he point is that the title shouldn't be fixed but dynamic to the device.
      - untog 14y ago
        Ah, well, I meant fixed in the CSS sense rather than the "exact size" sense.
    - rubinelli 14y ago
      Depending on the application and the space available, yes. That's why some aren't fixed, and some are hidden once you scroll after a certain point.
- gbog 14y ago
  You are not too far from carving your header in a JPEG file there. Some may remember good ol' times when most web sites did so. It was the same reason: someone decided the size must be fixed for the header to be following a fixed grid or corporate design paper, or something the like. You couldn't select the text, it was heavy, ugly, hackish, crawling against the grain of HTML, which is elastic. Now we know better, and let content flow, adjust itself, at the will of the users (on the desktop). This was the Dark Ages of the Web, why do we need to go through the same lows on mobile?
miniatureape 14y ago
In some browsers, removing the ability to zoom removes the 300ms delay that the click event has before it fires. You can use 'touchend,' but in certain cases this causes another set of bugs because the click event follows anyway. To fix this in a cross-browser way, you need to write some extra logic. There are several implementations floating around of various quality.
freyr 14y ago
Thank you! The worst is when pinch-to-zoom is disabled on an image viewing/sharing page. I believe Twitter is guilty of this. It's idiotic. I've also heard many arguments that responsive design makes pinch-to-zoom unnecessary. A page should automagically adjust so that it's optimal for a 27" monitor, a 2" mobile display, or anything in between. It's a great idea in theory, but I've yet to see it executed well in practice. I guess it's exceedingly difficult to design an effective UI that can automatically and seamlessly scale between a large-format screen and a small-format screen.
rimantas 14y ago
> Html is elastic by nature, and html 5 will win over > native apps because it is elastic. HTML won't win anything, first and foremost because it is not fighting anything. And HTML is neither elastic or inelastic. Calling HTML elastic is like calling an idea "green and wet". HTML is for marking up structure of the document (I am ignoring a couple of presentational attributes in HTML, but they should be ignored). CSS tells the browser is something is elastic or not. But all that has nothing to do with winning or loosing. Users don't give a shit if it is elastic or rigid. Does it work smoothly? Great. Does it look great? Superb. Was it coded with HTML/CSS/JS? Who cares… unless it impacts the first two.
- chc 14y ago
  > HTML won't win anything, first and foremost because it is not fighting anything. And HTML is neither elastic or inelastic. Calling HTML elastic is like calling an idea "green and wet". HTML is for marking up structure of the document (I am ignoring a couple of presentational attributes in HTML, but they should be ignored). CSS tells the browser is something is elastic or not. I think everybody here understands that, and the parent was using it as a shorthand for "the set of technologies commonly used in hypertext documents on the Web." It is not productive to issue a correction every time you encounter synecdoche.
- gbog 14y ago
  Actually, users don't give a shit either at how it looks or even if it works smoothly. They just care positively about content and entertainment, look at Wikipedia, Minecraft, early Google. But they also care negatively if something is getting in their way. That's why headers carved into gif images and flash for text and any other mean to force text size upon user are less and less used on the desktop. So why should it be current on my phone?
- Koder2013 14y ago
  "HTML is for marking up structure of the document" - exactly. The trouble starts when you start trying to use it for app's GUI.
robocat 14y ago
I too hate the disabling of pinch-to-zoom on websites. Chrome on my Android phone has the wonderful feature (in accessibility settings) that allows you to always pinch-to-zoom (overriding the sites viewport declaration). Until recently I too disabled pinch-to-zoom because it introduces so many bugs on every mobile browser I have tried - see my comments here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/10747648/436776 http://stackoverflow.com/a/10747648/436776 And on an iPhone or Android app, you can't pinch-to-zoom.

by gbog 14y ago

untog 14y ago

Pinch to zoom isn't that applicable on mobile-optimised webapps. If you have a fixed header on the top of the page what would pinch to zoom do? Make the header bigger? Or would it ignore the header and just zoom in on the body content?

rubinelli 14y ago
This is tangential to the pinch-to-zoom discussion, but I'd say if you have a fixed element anywhere, you don't have a mobile-optmised webapp. There are plenty of Android devices with 640x480 or 320x240 out there; a fixed header in one of them looks like a big waste of screen space.
- untog 14y ago
  Huh? Do you regard the title bar at the top of native Android apps to also be wasted space?
  - ArtB 14y ago
    I think he point is that the title shouldn't be fixed but dynamic to the device.
    - untog 14y ago
      Ah, well, I meant fixed in the CSS sense rather than the "exact size" sense.
  - rubinelli 14y ago
    Depending on the application and the space available, yes. That's why some aren't fixed, and some are hidden once you scroll after a certain point.
gbog 14y ago
You are not too far from carving your header in a JPEG file there. Some may remember good ol' times when most web sites did so. It was the same reason: someone decided the size must be fixed for the header to be following a fixed grid or corporate design paper, or something the like. You couldn't select the text, it was heavy, ugly, hackish, crawling against the grain of HTML, which is elastic. Now we know better, and let content flow, adjust itself, at the will of the users (on the desktop). This was the Dark Ages of the Web, why do we need to go through the same lows on mobile?

miniatureape 14y ago

In some browsers, removing the ability to zoom removes the 300ms delay that the click event has before it fires. You can use 'touchend,' but in certain cases this causes another set of bugs because the click event follows anyway. To fix this in a cross-browser way, you need to write some extra logic. There are several implementations floating around of various quality.

freyr 14y ago

Thank you! The worst is when pinch-to-zoom is disabled on an image viewing/sharing page. I believe Twitter is guilty of this. It's idiotic. I've also heard many arguments that responsive design makes pinch-to-zoom unnecessary. A page should automagically adjust so that it's optimal for a 27" monitor, a 2" mobile display, or anything in between. It's a great idea in theory, but I've yet to see it executed well in practice. I guess it's exceedingly difficult to design an effective UI that can automatically and seamlessly scale between a large-format screen and a small-format screen.

rimantas 14y ago

> Html is elastic by nature, and html 5 will win over > native apps because it is elastic. HTML won't win anything, first and foremost because it is not fighting anything. And HTML is neither elastic or inelastic. Calling HTML elastic is like calling an idea "green and wet". HTML is for marking up structure of the document (I am ignoring a couple of presentational attributes in HTML, but they should be ignored). CSS tells the browser is something is elastic or not. But all that has nothing to do with winning or loosing. Users don't give a shit if it is elastic or rigid. Does it work smoothly? Great. Does it look great? Superb. Was it coded with HTML/CSS/JS? Who cares… unless it impacts the first two.

chc 14y ago
> HTML won't win anything, first and foremost because it is not fighting anything. And HTML is neither elastic or inelastic. Calling HTML elastic is like calling an idea "green and wet". HTML is for marking up structure of the document (I am ignoring a couple of presentational attributes in HTML, but they should be ignored). CSS tells the browser is something is elastic or not. I think everybody here understands that, and the parent was using it as a shorthand for "the set of technologies commonly used in hypertext documents on the Web." It is not productive to issue a correction every time you encounter synecdoche.
gbog 14y ago
Actually, users don't give a shit either at how it looks or even if it works smoothly. They just care positively about content and entertainment, look at Wikipedia, Minecraft, early Google. But they also care negatively if something is getting in their way. That's why headers carved into gif images and flash for text and any other mean to force text size upon user are less and less used on the desktop. So why should it be current on my phone?
Koder2013 14y ago
"HTML is for marking up structure of the document" - exactly. The trouble starts when you start trying to use it for app's GUI.

robocat 14y ago

I too hate the disabling of pinch-to-zoom on websites. Chrome on my Android phone has the wonderful feature (in accessibility settings) that allows you to always pinch-to-zoom (overriding the sites viewport declaration). Until recently I too disabled pinch-to-zoom because it introduces so many bugs on every mobile browser I have tried - see my comments here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/10747648/436776 http://stackoverflow.com/a/10747648/436776 And on an iPhone or Android app, you can't pinch-to-zoom.