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Why are smartphones portrait?
I've noticed it seems impossible for the same website to work ok on a normal computer and mobile. In fact most websites on mobile browsers are broken or horrible to use. I'm currently going through the process of trying to make my website work 'ok' on mobile.
The biggest problem I find is that computers display in landscape and smartphones usually display in portrait, thus making any layout/styling useless cross platform but also the organisation of the pages themselves may not be ideal on both platforms.
But why is this!? It seems to be the biggest issue fragmenting these two platforms. Are they like that just because apple thought it would be cool when they made the iphone?
- makerops 13y agoSimple answer, I would assume is that it is because you hold a smartphone in your hand (contour etc), and a monitor is on a stand/wall.
- saidajigumi 13y agoSmartphones aren't portrait. They can be held in either orientation and the browser will comply. So it's we humans who mostly choose to hold the phone in portrait orientation. There's no single answer, but I'll offer pointers: - Ergonomics. It's generally easier to hold and handle a smartphone one-handed in portrait. - Readability. Speaking personally, it's mostly annoying to have wide text lines and a short display height. The exclusive reason I use landscape on the mobile web is when the site doesn't handle mobile and the text is just too small even on a high PPI display. Switching to landscape generally increases the text size while keeping each line visible. If you haven't already, search for resources on Responsive Web Design. Ethan Marcotte's essay[1] at A List Apart was a big spark under this movement, and a LOT more has been written and implemented in this vein since that was written. [1] http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/ http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/