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Curmudgeon time: reflow and zoom were probably my favorite features of the original Motorola Droid browser. There were zoom ( +, - ) buttons in the lower-right

Curmudgeon time: reflow and zoom were probably my favorite features of the original Motorola Droid browser. There were zoom ( +, - ) buttons in the lower-right to zoom in and out -- accessible one handed, with your thumb, none of that pinch-to-zoom nonsense. And the text reflowed on zoom! Further iterations of Android slowly stripped out these features -- first the buttons went, in favor of pinch-to-zoom, then reflow in favor of... a worse user experience. Most sites with a lot of horizontal text (hello, HN!) are hard to read in portrait mode without constantly scrolling. Phones are faster than ever, I don't see why computational requirements would be a good reason for disabling reflow. Turn off all those damn animated-transparent-rounded transitions and give me back my reflow. As far as I can tell, none of the major mobile OSes (Android, iOS, Windows Phone) ship with text reflow in the browser by default. Well, except HTC Android, according to the article. And that is maddening.

digi_owl 11y ago
Reflow on pages with indented text, as HN, is a borderline mess. More often then not the text is reflowed but the indent preserved, thus requiring horizontal scrolling to bring the full text into view...
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Which is the proper way to do it... The alternative being ending up with a 1-character wide column of text.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Except that people want reflow exactly to avoid having to do horizontal scrolling. Then again, most of the time what is wanted is not so much zoom as the ability to bump up the font size.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      I want reflow to avoid mid-line horizontal scrolling. I don't really care if each block of text gets offset.
      - ethanbond 11y ago
        Yeah, exactly. I want one chunk of text to be legible in one frame. I don't care if I have to scroll chunk-to-chunk.
1ris 11y ago
I use Opera Mobile on Android since it is available. The only reason for me is that the zooming and reflow works like I want it to.
- bwat48 11y ago
  same here the text reflow is a must, it also has my favorite tab management of the mobile browsers
- ncza 11y ago
  Try Lightning. Its a bit buggy and unfortunately put tabs at the top (whyyyy ..) but zooming and reflow are like opera mobile assuming you mean the classic one, not the one with random font sizes.
  - unicornporn 11y ago
    My experience is that Lightning text reflow doesn't work at all like pre Kit Kat Web View text reflow. How have you configured Lightning?
    - ncza 11y ago
      Hm, what exactly are you looking for? I am on 2.3 so maybe it's just using some OS provided stuff, if so, sorry for the useless suggestion. For me it seems similar to what I remember from the stock browser and the good old opera mobile before the drama (rip...).
BHSPitMonkey 11y ago
On Android, in most places where you can zoom (browsers, Maps, etc.) you can zoom one-handed with a double-tap (where the second tap is held down and dragged up or down to zoom in or out before releasing). It's actually a pretty smooth interaction once you know to do it.
- Khao 11y ago
  I've used android for years and never knew you could do this. This is one of the things I hate most about all those gestures : there's no way to know about them unless you just try a bunch of random things, or you google for "android browser gestures" or something like that. Give me buttons to do the same things those gestures do! Hide them behing menu if you want, but give me functionality that I can use right now without having to hunt for them on the web.
  - radley 11y ago
    If it helps, double-tap (or sometimes long-press) to zoom occurs in many photo apps on various platforms.
  - cloudwalking 11y ago
    FWIW this also works in Google Maps for iOS. I wish it worked system wide.
    - accatyyc 11y ago
      This is kind of system wide on iOS. Almost all apps that support zoom supports double tapping to zoom in. Safari zooms into the HTML element you double tapped on and fits it nicely on the screen.
  - bentcorner 11y ago
    Another gesture you'd never know you could do - double tap with two fingers will zoom out in google maps (e.g., the inverse of double tap with one finger). I think this works on both Android and iOS.
  - 11y ago
hackmiester 11y ago
This doesn't solve the reflow problem, but you can double tap to zoom, too. I always forget Android supports pinch. I never use it, myself (don't like needing my other hand except when typing).
hyperpallium 11y ago
Reflow works on mine (4.2.2 android, default browser). You need to pinch to zoom, but then a double tap reflows. [It took a while to stumble across it, and then another while to realize what that sudden weird thing actually was.] NB: I have Settings->Avanced->"Auto-fit pages' checked (4th from bottom). Maybe that helps. It works pretty well, but as others have said, apart from indented (or monospaced "code") text. BTW: double tap and move up/down to zoom doesn't work in that broswer (though it does on the Google Maps app).
- ge0rg 11y ago
  Yes, Google removed that feature in Android 4.4, breaking the user experience and not going to fix it again: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378#c115 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378#c11...
  - serve_yay 11y ago
    This HN comment thread is unintentionally funny because of all the people talking about a thing that got removed in a version after the one they have, and saying "well I don't know what you're talking about!" Yeah, you don't. Sheesh.
gmac 11y ago
iOS Safari sometimes increases text size automagically. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6210788/how-to-avoid-ios-automatic-font-size-adjustment http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6210788/how-to-avoid-ios-...
unicornporn 11y ago
The removed text reflow function in Android brought me to tears and Google does not intend to fix it.[1] Opera for Android is the only option that does this really good right now (in a browser that doesn't feel like a malware data collector). Lightning browser (open source) released an update this week that brought text reflow to post Kit Kat devices, but the way the text reflow works doesn't come close to the original Android implementation or Opera. Just try it on Hacker News. [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378

digi_owl 11y ago

Reflow on pages with indented text, as HN, is a borderline mess. More often then not the text is reflowed but the indent preserved, thus requiring horizontal scrolling to bring the full text into view...

ethanbond 11y ago
Which is the proper way to do it... The alternative being ending up with a 1-character wide column of text.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Except that people want reflow exactly to avoid having to do horizontal scrolling. Then again, most of the time what is wanted is not so much zoom as the ability to bump up the font size.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    I want reflow to avoid mid-line horizontal scrolling. I don't really care if each block of text gets offset.
    - ethanbond 11y ago
      Yeah, exactly. I want one chunk of text to be legible in one frame. I don't care if I have to scroll chunk-to-chunk.

1ris 11y ago

I use Opera Mobile on Android since it is available. The only reason for me is that the zooming and reflow works like I want it to.

bwat48 11y ago
same here the text reflow is a must, it also has my favorite tab management of the mobile browsers
ncza 11y ago
Try Lightning. Its a bit buggy and unfortunately put tabs at the top (whyyyy ..) but zooming and reflow are like opera mobile assuming you mean the classic one, not the one with random font sizes.
- unicornporn 11y ago
  My experience is that Lightning text reflow doesn't work at all like pre Kit Kat Web View text reflow. How have you configured Lightning?
  - ncza 11y ago
    Hm, what exactly are you looking for? I am on 2.3 so maybe it's just using some OS provided stuff, if so, sorry for the useless suggestion. For me it seems similar to what I remember from the stock browser and the good old opera mobile before the drama (rip...).

BHSPitMonkey 11y ago

On Android, in most places where you can zoom (browsers, Maps, etc.) you can zoom one-handed with a double-tap (where the second tap is held down and dragged up or down to zoom in or out before releasing). It's actually a pretty smooth interaction once you know to do it.

Khao 11y ago
I've used android for years and never knew you could do this. This is one of the things I hate most about all those gestures : there's no way to know about them unless you just try a bunch of random things, or you google for "android browser gestures" or something like that. Give me buttons to do the same things those gestures do! Hide them behing menu if you want, but give me functionality that I can use right now without having to hunt for them on the web.
- radley 11y ago
  If it helps, double-tap (or sometimes long-press) to zoom occurs in many photo apps on various platforms.
- cloudwalking 11y ago
  FWIW this also works in Google Maps for iOS. I wish it worked system wide.
  - accatyyc 11y ago
    This is kind of system wide on iOS. Almost all apps that support zoom supports double tapping to zoom in. Safari zooms into the HTML element you double tapped on and fits it nicely on the screen.
- bentcorner 11y ago
  Another gesture you'd never know you could do - double tap with two fingers will zoom out in google maps (e.g., the inverse of double tap with one finger). I think this works on both Android and iOS.
- 11y ago

hackmiester 11y ago

This doesn't solve the reflow problem, but you can double tap to zoom, too. I always forget Android supports pinch. I never use it, myself (don't like needing my other hand except when typing).

hyperpallium 11y ago

Reflow works on mine (4.2.2 android, default browser). You need to pinch to zoom, but then a double tap reflows. [It took a while to stumble across it, and then another while to realize what that sudden weird thing actually was.] NB: I have Settings->Avanced->"Auto-fit pages' checked (4th from bottom). Maybe that helps. It works pretty well, but as others have said, apart from indented (or monospaced "code") text. BTW: double tap and move up/down to zoom doesn't work in that broswer (though it does on the Google Maps app).

ge0rg 11y ago
Yes, Google removed that feature in Android 4.4, breaking the user experience and not going to fix it again: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378#c115 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378#c11...
- serve_yay 11y ago
  This HN comment thread is unintentionally funny because of all the people talking about a thing that got removed in a version after the one they have, and saying "well I don't know what you're talking about!" Yeah, you don't. Sheesh.

gmac 11y ago

iOS Safari sometimes increases text size automagically. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6210788/how-to-avoid-ios-automatic-font-size-adjustment http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6210788/how-to-avoid-ios-...

unicornporn 11y ago

The removed text reflow function in Android brought me to tears and Google does not intend to fix it.[1] Opera for Android is the only option that does this really good right now (in a browser that doesn't feel like a malware data collector). Lightning browser (open source) released an update this week that brought text reflow to post Kit Kat devices, but the way the text reflow works doesn't come close to the original Android implementation or Opera. Just try it on Hacker News. [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378