Re: Proposal: Form factor media queries

On Dec 12, 2011, at 5:53 AM, Brian <irishb@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for everyone's input so far. Christoph, you're right in that with device and display width and height queries, it's possible to determine form factor. I suppose my issue lies in that we have to rely on something other than a given value for "device-type" to determine the device type. I would argue that the "intuitive factor" is greater in simply typing device-type="handset" or "tablet", rather than writing out device width/height queries.

Then you would have to know where the dividing line is between a large headset and a small tablet. I rather just have a MQ on whether it was touch input, and then I (an author) could decide on my own what width and/or height (in CSS units) to use to differentiate between sizes. 

> On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 4:36 AM, Christoph Päper
> <christoph.paeper@crissov.de> wrote:
> > Brian:
> >> Smartphones will likely have resolutions that will either rival or
> >> supersede present-day laptop resolutions, so our approach of detecting
> >> screen resolution and/or pixel density will be useless as a means to detect
> >> form factor.
> >
> > Um, if I’m not mistaken, the device and display width and height queries would work just fine with physical units (‘mm’, ‘cm’, even ‘in’, ‘pt’, ‘pc’) if they’re not affected by the fixed 96px = 72pt (= 1in = 25.4mm) ratio required elsewhere (font size etc.).
> 
> They work the same, with the fixed ratio.  Anything else would be
> *ridiculously* confusing.  ("I set up a media query asking if the
> screen is 10in wide, and then set the body's width to 10in!  Why is it
> overflowing?")
> 
> ~TJ
> 
>