This is a test page mentioned in Google web dev responsive design article for testing the viewport meta tag:
https://with-vp-meta.glitch.me/
There is a strange behavior observed when testing with chrome dev tools responsive devices in devices with very low width (at least below 320px)
If you keep on reducing the width, there comes a point where the html body width is not equal to the device pixel width anymore (though it should be equal as per the width=device-width value).
It looks like this:
As you can see, the body tag is selected in the Elements panel. The size of the selection is much less than the 81px device width as mentioned in the dev tools device header (81 x 711)
If you look at the dimensions in computed styles: the dimensions are mentioned as 81px width
This is a real issue, actually happening with my website (on not so smaller width), and this is just an example to recreate it easily.
I suspect this has something to do with the viewport meta tag and it's handling, but i am not able to pinpoint what the problem is. I have tried different combinations of width and initial-scale to recreate this scenario in other dimensions, but wasn't able to recreate a scenario where the rendered body width is less than the viewport width, but devtools inspect still shows the dimensions as correct, although the rendered dimensions do not match the pixel dimensions?
Related
Is it mandatory for responsive design the use of the meta tag viewport?
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">
I have done few test without and it works well on desktops browser and it adapts propertly to the size of the windows, even if I use viewports as width or height to define header and footer.
So is that meta tag only useful to mobile devices or that's either necessary?
Does viewport use a default width or height for mobile devices?
When the meta tag is not defined there is a virtual viewport default values defined. Non-mobile-optimized sites with these default vaules looks in general better on narrow screen devices.
On Safari iOS the default width is 980 pixels, and the others browsers width size are alike or a little less.
Narrow screen devices (e.g. mobiles) render pages in a virtual window or viewport, which is usually wider than the screen, and then shrink the rendered result down so it can all be seen at once. Users can then pan and zoom to see different areas of the page.
For example, if a mobile screen has a width of 640px, pages might be rendered with a virtual viewport of 980px, and then it will be shrunk down to fit into the 640px space.
Explanation and default values for width and height with viewport on mobiles
Apple as the inventor of viewport says that the default viewport settings are:
The default width is 980 pixels. However, these defaults may not work well for your webpages, particularly if you are tailoring your website for a particular device.
Apple configuring viewport and default values
This is the common setting of viewport used in various mobile-optimized websites. The width property governs the size of the viewport. It is possible to set it to a specific value (“width=600”) in terms of CSS pixels. Here it is set to a special value(“width= device-width”) which is the width of the device in terms of CSS pixels at a scale of 100%. The initial-scale property governs the zoom level when the page is loaded for the first time.
Note: The meta tag should be added in the head tag in HTML document.
A Responsive tags has the following attributed:
width: Width of the virtual viewport of the device.
height: Height of the virtual viewport of the device.
initial-scale: Zoom level when the page is first visited.
minimum-scale: Minimum zoom level to which a user can zoom the page.
maximum-scale: Maximum zoom level to which a user can zoom the page.
user-scalable: Flag which allows the device to zoom in or out.(value= yes/no).
Ref: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/html-viewport-meta-tag-for-responsive-web-design/
Demo
I want to make responsiveness behaviour like at this site.
There is meta viewport content set to width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, but if i resize browser vieport size by reducing its width (about 200px width and smaller), content scales proportionally and responsiveness "swithes off".
You can compare this site and jsFiddle demo with picture below. The same text with the same font-size, but scales differently.
UPD
I need to know how can i set 20px font size and it will scale proportionally like without using meta viewport. Try to make a <h1> with meta viewport and without one, you will understand what i mean
Your question is unclear, but assuming you're talking about the fact that on your demo, the content is blocking its resize after a certain minimum width:
It is important to understand the function of the meta viewport.
The viewport is the user's visible area of a web page.
The viewport varies with the device, and will be smaller on a mobile phone than on a computer screen.
-Source
This function prevents a user to zoom in or out on your website. The code you give us says that the width of your webpage must be the width of the parent viewport (equal to your browser's viewable area), that the initial zoom has to be 1 (that means no initial zoom is set) and that the maximum scale can be 1 (that means no zooming in allowed).
The fact that your website is responsive until a certain minimum width hasn't any direct link to the meta viewport.
The responsiveness of a website is based on what's called breakpoints in CSS. This gives certain CSS rules based on the viewport properties (in responsive cases: if the screen's width is between a certain minimum amount of px and a maximum amount). According to what I can understand, you actually need to set the CSS min-width attribute to your website's body like this:
body {
min-width: 300px; /*You'll have to set the value you wish here*/
}
The next thing you have to do is choose how you will handle screens smaller than 300px. There are two options after this:
You can choose to force-give your webpage the device's width and prevent horizontal scrolling but this will hide all the overflow. I personally suggest not to use this technique. For doing this, you'll need to hide all html's overflow with this CSS: html {max-width: 100vw; overflow-X: hidden;}.
The other (better) option is to give your webpage the minimum required width. This will allow horizontal scrolling and a better user experience. To do so, use this CSS code: html {min-width: 300px; overflow-X: visible;} (remember to replace 300px with your desired minimum width).
This should be all for now. Remember that there are hundreds of guides for responsive web design available. Hope your issue is solved.
The solution was simple. I needed just set body min-width
In my app I use Bootstrap and I set 2rem to my h2 element and 1.7rem to my h3 tag. Even if I adjust the browser width in my desktop (to the size of a mobile) the h1 is bigger than h3 which is what I want. But if I use the developer tools to switch to a mobile device view or view the site from my phone the h1 becomes smaller than the h3! What might be happening in here? It happened in multiple sites I created.
Example fiddle (Could not replicate the issue in the fiddle. But it's the code) : https://jsfiddle.net/gor87kg6/1/
The live site which have the issue : http://jayatours.lk/
Following the Bootstrap mobile first approach I noticed your website was not utilising the viewport meta.
Try adding the following to the <head>:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
Background Information:
Mobile browsers render pages in a virtual "window" (the viewport), usually wider than the screen, so they don't need to squeeze every page layout into a tiny window (which would break many non-mobile-optimized sites). Users can pan and zoom to see different areas of the page.
Viewport Information:
The width property controls the size of the viewport. It can be set to a specific number of pixels like width=600 or to the special value device-width value which is the width of the screen in CSS pixels at a scale of 100%. (There are corresponding height and device-height values, which may be useful for pages with elements that change size or position based on the viewport height.)
I believe this may be the cause of your issue as the use of rem seems to be correctly implemented. It might be more likely down to the dpi/ screen resolution of the mobile/ tablet device itself.
rem is a unit relative to the font size of the base (html) tag. The default in browsers is usually 16px if you haven't explicitly declared it. Perhaps the mobile browser has a smaller default?
Try setting the base font size before using rem units:
html { font-size: 16px; }
I don't see any issue. If you still see the issue then there could be 2 ways to resolve this:
1) See that the h1 font-size is not being set again in the media query
2) Check the base font applied to the html & whether it is being reset in the media query
Quick Overview of my Problem:
I made a site for mobile, it looks great. Move on tablet it looks horrible. As in it's like 5x stretched out from left and right. Imagine your face stretched horizontally up to 4ft.
Research and Possible Solution
I had a feeling i could viewport. As I thought, if i could just SCALE the layout instead of having browser provide more width and then my layout spreading to accommodate.
Article told me that if i set viewport meta tag width=300 or anything custom then browser scales whole page to fit the current viewport's actual width so 300px would be covering 1200px, at least that's what my impression was.
However, it DIDN'T work. No matter what viewport settings I do they appear to have no effect on scaling.
What i want
I want my page to scale up. I don't want to specify every border width in em units than create dozen media query checkpoints to increase font size. Especially since my layout remains the same only it needs to scale up.
If i was going after different layouts then obviously i'd've used media queries.
I've tried this:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=300">
I solved it using some javascript
first add (i'm using jade)
meta(id="myViewport", name="viewport", content="width=device-width")
Now window.innerWidth will give correct browser width and not some arbitrary number set by browser like 960 which was being reported by chrome on 360 width phone and 2100+ tablet.
Now just check if screen is wide then limit the viewport's width that way browser will scale it up so, for my tablet, 500 pixels will take up 2100 pixels.
if (window.innerWidth > 450) {
var mvp = document.getElementById('myViewport');
mvp.setAttribute('content','width=500');
}
//- first set device width so window.innerwidth shows actual width then change accordingly.
I'm using the xeon Bootstrap template (http://shapebootstrap.net/preview/?id=64). Firefox on a Mac renders the margins close to the edge of the window. Safari, using a window that is exactly the same size, renders the margins much wider.
Two questions: Why is this? How can I configure Bootstrap to be more consistent across browsers?
Thanks.
I'm not on a Mac so I cannot verify what I'm about to suggest. A screenshot might be helpful or a link to the page. There is not a lot to go on here, hence the lack of answers, but I'll give it a shot.
I'm assuming the issue is with the browsers and not Bootstrap or some sort of perception of difference that is not fully understood.
What exactly do you mean by "is exactly the same size"? Are both browsers maximized? Did you manually re-size them so the top, right, bottom and left edges line up? If so, that doesn't mean the viewports are the same size. Each browser has it's own chrome, UI elements (scrollbar) and etc., that can be different sizes and which will affect the viewport size.
The .container element's margin is set to auto which the browser automatically calculates for set width elements like .container. Bootstrap's .container class has specified widths for various viewport sizes. You might be viewing your page at a viewport width that is very close to a breakpoint and the right scrollbar (or something similar) is slightly smaller/larger in one browser than in the other. This in turn could trigger the page to render at a different widths giving the appearance of different margins.
For example:
Bootstrap has a breakpoint at 992px.
If your viewport width is 995px in Firefox, Bootstrap would render .container at 970px.
If your viewport width is 990px in Safari, Bootstrap would render .container at 750px.
Based on this suggestion of it being a breakpoint issue I would find out what each browser's viewport width is exactly. Then make sure you set them to the same width. If you get the same result/issue, then you will know it is not a breakpoint.
Additional information would be helpful.
Hopefully this points you in the right direction.