Have I been on sites where I wished zoom was enabled? Yes
Have I been on sites where I wished zoom was DISabled? Yes
The point is, I design my stuff so it feels like a native app. I design my stuff so it is as accessible as the apps that came with the device. Zooming is a feature added to mobile browsers so mobile users have a fallback to view websites that dont support mobile screen sizes, but designing websites for mobile intentionally to make use of a fallback for non-mobile support isn't using the mobile device to its fullest potential?
Without zooming, how do you all use things on your phones that ARENT websites? They don't zoom either...
If I enable zooming for users, every tap on every mobile device is going to get slower for every user. Is that in the interest of better UI?
Do you think users tap more, or zoom more when using web apps?
Would you rather fill out a desktop Credit Card subscription form by zooming and panning around, or using a form designed to be input with a thumb where all of the fields are fit to the screen width?
I can tell you right now, if I designed our sites like some of these HN commenters want it would be comfy for them to browse and we would lose thousands of dollars revenue. As others have noticed, there are browsers that have a zoom override, as well as bookmarklets and other ways you can bypass the no-zoom thing if you're a mobile user with special needs or who likes zooming. YOU can enabled that device-wide for yourself if that's how you like it, but it doesn't make sense for all projects to be built the same way when the goals and intended support for projects varies widely.
>> To enable Zoom, use three fingers and double-tap the screen.
>> To increase the level of Zoom, use three fingers to double-tap and hold, then move your fingers up or down on the screen to increase or decrease magnification.
> If I enable zooming for users, every tap on every mobile device is going to get slower for every user. Is that in the interest of better UI?
> Without zooming, how do you all use things on your phones that ARENT websites? They don't zoom either...
yes they do. I have it enabled on my phone. Here' the iOS Reddit app, first[1] the way I normally use it, and second[2] they way it would look on a default phone.
I've yet to see a web-app designed to look native, that worked better for me than the normal website would have on my phone. This is why I'm so skeptical
It's not about looking native, it's about being as easy to use as a native app instead of feeling like you're controlling a desktop website with a touchscreen interface.
I use VNC on my iOS devices all the time - I pan and zoom around and use actual desktop apps and browsers from mobile devices. I guarantee this is not the most optimal way to control things from a mobile device!
- You're not enlarging the font size, you're scaling the entire viewport. When thew viewport is larger than the screen things like modals (or other UI elements) may not appear where they are supposed to, if at all for the user
- slows down the time browsers respond to a tap by 300ms
- makes text difficult to read by the time the font is large enough because line lengths and line breaks happen off the screen now, so you're constantly panning to read your text
- users don't complete as many forms when they can scale the viewport, completing out forms is an integral step of nearly all online business models in some capacity
- without scaling disabled, a second tap within 300ms of an initial tap will zoom in on that section of the page. When developing web apps with game features I want to be sure that if the user taps too fast the page stays put
- User-scaling was not intended as a feature for mobile websites, but rather as a stop-gap to allow smartphone users to view desktop sites written by designers who had not prepared their site for mobile visitors. It's never been the plan or roadmap for mobile sites to use the zooming feature, and Apple provided developers a way to turn it off and encouraged them to do so if they add targeted support for mobile
Have I been on sites where I wished zoom was DISabled? Yes
The point is, I design my stuff so it feels like a native app. I design my stuff so it is as accessible as the apps that came with the device. Zooming is a feature added to mobile browsers so mobile users have a fallback to view websites that dont support mobile screen sizes, but designing websites for mobile intentionally to make use of a fallback for non-mobile support isn't using the mobile device to its fullest potential?
Without zooming, how do you all use things on your phones that ARENT websites? They don't zoom either...
If I enable zooming for users, every tap on every mobile device is going to get slower for every user. Is that in the interest of better UI?
Do you think users tap more, or zoom more when using web apps?
Would you rather fill out a desktop Credit Card subscription form by zooming and panning around, or using a form designed to be input with a thumb where all of the fields are fit to the screen width?
I can tell you right now, if I designed our sites like some of these HN commenters want it would be comfy for them to browse and we would lose thousands of dollars revenue. As others have noticed, there are browsers that have a zoom override, as well as bookmarklets and other ways you can bypass the no-zoom thing if you're a mobile user with special needs or who likes zooming. YOU can enabled that device-wide for yourself if that's how you like it, but it doesn't make sense for all projects to be built the same way when the goals and intended support for projects varies widely.