Re: [mediaqueries4] pointer: coarse and pannable, zoomable viewports

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Sylvain Galineau
<sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
> [Tab Atkins Jr.:]
>> Compare this to today's world, where in the "best" case you decide whether
>> to do touch or mouse stuff based on a combination of user-agent and
>> device-size detection, and new devices generally get sorted semi-randomly
>> into one of the categories.
>
> Yes, they get sorted into a category but they remain in that category, right?
> Are there apps out there that will change their layout on me based on when
> they think I'm using one pointer or the other? Maybe I need to look at them
> to understand why anyone would want to risk that.

Oh, I wasn't thinking that it would swap.  I mean, maybe it could, but
I was assuming that the MQ would remain stable.  Though, that seems
somewhat bad if you have a device that is primarily mouse-driven, but
you can disconnect the monitor to use as a touch tablet.  You'd
presumably want the page to change slightly to accommodate that?

I don't think it's really possible to *tell* whether you're using one
type of pointer or another today, so you won't find any apps that deal
with that information.


>> With this, though it may not be able to give the best answer every time,
>> it most circumstances it can (as there's only a single interface method).
>
> Not sure what 'it' refers to here?

it = the MQ, except for the second "it", which is a typo for "in".

>> Maybe we can extend the feature to handle mixed-interface devices better?
>> I'm not sure how to, off the top of my head.
>
> All right, let's assume you can detect that. What CSS do you write when you
> know the UA has both fine and coarse pointers? More specifically, what CSS
> would you write that is different from that which you'd apply if it only had
> one of them?

I think that, ideally, I'd like to know what the user is doing *right
now*, and lay out accordingly by growing/shrinking some things.

In the absence of this kind of magical information, I suspect I'd be
pessimistic and just always design for the touch case.  Slightly
larger touch targets aren't *bad* for mouse-based interaction, they
just produce a slightly larger interface than is strictly necessary
for a mouse.

Given that, I think my answer to the "multi-model device" question is
actually that it should just be pessimistic and answer "coarse".  I
guess that applies equally to the "hover" MQ - it should return false
if the device can reasonably be used in a hover-capable and
non-hover-capable state.  If the device had a strong signal one way or
the other, I could see it being useful to go ahead and be accurate,
but I'd leave that up to the UA.

~TJ

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 21:35:38 UTC