For those who hate horizontal scrolling

[Xairbusdriver]

Many of us have complained about web pages that are "designed" non-fluidly and thus require horizontal scrolling if your window doesn't happen to be what the "designer" wants. To whom I say, "Hey! It's my computer, my browser, my monitor! I'll use any computer/browser I want, make the screen/window any size I please! Your job is to make it work normally under some minimum conditions. Keep your fancy ActiveX junk for your personal site! Thank you very much!"

Well, I've come across what looks like an almost complete solution!

Unfortunately, it will cost between $600 and $800! It's an iPhone!

It is built to scale every page so that it fits the width of the screen. Various aspects of the displayed page are designer assigned using CSS3 ( if they're smart ). And if all else fails, one can still 'pan' horizontally. But most web pages will do just fine!

BTW, all this is built into Safari for iPhone, don't expect any of this ease of use t be found in any other mobile device, their browsers simply don't understand how to do this. Maybe in a couple of years...Explorer 2010, due out in 2015?

[kimmer]

So why can't browsers on my Mac do this? I don't want to buy an iPhone to surf the net.

[danf63]

Great point, Kimmer!

Dan

[Dreambird]

Just curious... but what sites are you hitting that cause horizontal scrolling these days?
I really hate it myself but it's been a long time since I've found a place that forced me to do so...

I don't have my browser covering the whole screen either, but generally like to leave some space around the window... just habit.

[Xairbusdriver]

Besides the occasional thread stretching posts here, I see quite a few. I keep my browser set at 800 pixels wide so our church site will always fit that rather old standard. But many of our members older adults and even some of the younger ones have very little browser/internet smarts.

The point is, there should never be a site that requires a horizontal scroll if it is built properly. Of course, "built properly" is my definition! Mainly, a site should be flexible enough to fit anything from 800 pixels upwards, IMHO. If it won't fit that small a page, it is simply because the 'designer' doesn't care about what size windows his users might want. Period.

By design, the iPhone must have a built-in mechanism to shrink a page to fit the very small screen. But a tiny scroll bar would be a waste of screen space, first of all. Secondly, long lines of text are not easily read by scrolling back and forth.
So, Apple invented the double-tap method of enlarging a chosen section, usually to a size where the text is beautiful (text is often completely unreadable in the initial, scaled display). And they created ways for the designer to set limits on how much scaling/enlarging/even text sizing can be used. Of course, that would be in a particular CSS page just for iPhones. Actually, you can set the minimum size/width of a device so the same CSS could end up on a desktop browser.

Granted you may have decided to stop fighting the small window problems if you have the screen real estate. But I like to keep other windows easily visible on my 17" LCD (my browser hardly ever is more than 60% of my window width) and my wife uses the very small 13" iBook! The problem is caused by lazy, unconcerned 'designers' who simply do what they like and the user be damned. Of course, there are clients who make unreasonable specifications for such things and ignore the advice of the experts. Oh well...