Re: Comments on media queries

On Nov 15, 2007, at 19:54, Stewart Brodie wrote:

> Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>
>>  * The device dimensions seem potentially harmful. Most often authors
>> should really be querying the view port. Querying the device
>> dimensions implies that the content is presumed to be important  
>> enough
>> to warrant asking the user to resize the view port to expand to fill
>> the available space.
>
> Not every browser runs on a desktop.

How is that relevant? Either the user can resize the view port, in  
which case querying the device means that the authors feels his/her  
content is important enough to warrant view port resizing or the user  
cannot resize the view port in which case querying the device is even  
worse.

> Some of our content really does want
> to know the dimensions of the device, not the size of the frame/ 
> iframe that
> the document containing the media query might exist in.

What's the use case for a document sizing itself to the device as  
opposed to its host iframe?

[...]
>  We would update our support too, although it is extremely
> unlikely that we would remove device-width and device-height.
>
>>   - Tutorials that I have seen query the device for no good reason.
>> That's not a good sign.
>
> I agree - it isn't good when tutorials teach people incorrectly.

What would be a correct use of the device queries on the continuous  
screen media?

>>  * There's no way to query the aspect ratio of the viewport.
>
> It still feels to me like there should be - as long as it's not at the
> expense of device-aspect-ratio.  This has been the topic of long
> conversations on this mailing list in the past though.

I'm not sure what the aspect ratio query is good for, but if it is  
good for something, it seems to me that authors really should be  
querying the aspect ratio of the view port most of the time.

Two more things:

  * Device measures don't say how they are supposed to work with a  
multi-screen setup. Do they query the screen the browser window is on?

  * The definition for <resolution> doesn't say if the unit can be  
omitted with zero.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 16 November 2007 07:53:28 UTC