Mobile Styles: options

[fu]

Since the last time I posted, we've made live some additional tweaks for mobile styles. Medium sized screens (tablet / phone landscape) should in general handle the ratio of sidebar to content better, and not let the sidebar crowd into the content as much. Comments should also no longer go into one-word-per-line in extreme cases on certain layouts, and should always have a background even if they're so deeply threaded that they start going past the sidebar.

But of course what works in general may not work for your journal! So there's one set of options that's journal-specific.

If you're mostly happy with how things appear, but want to tweak the width at which changes are applied to your journal, go to your journal customize settings > Additional Options, and then look for

"The width at which the layout switches from single column mode (mobile view) to multiple columns if selected (tablet view). "

and

"The width at which the layout switches to larger screen mode (desktop view) and can afford some extra whitespace. "

Setting a width in the first option will make the biggest difference; the second option should only be minor whitespace tweaks depending on the layout.


Meanwhile, if what you want is to control how you view journals across all of Dreamwidth, there's a different option for that. If you'd like to always view the desktop / big screen version on your mobile phone or tablet, go to your Account Display Settings and check "Turn off mobile view for this device".

That will carry over to all journals you view whether you're logged in or logged out. It's device-specific* so if things work on your phone but not your tablet, or vice versa, you can check or uncheck this setting per-device.

* more accurately, it's browser-specific. If you're using multiple browsers on a device, you'll have to check it for each browser.

Comments

[moetushie]

Wow, thank you! This is useful to know. :)

[musyc]

What was the reasoning for making this a per-browser cookie rather than a per-account setting? I don't usually clear my DW cookies, but I can image a situation somewhere in the future where I might, after I've forgotten about the ticky, and then spend an hour trying to figure out why journals aren't displaying right.

[fu]

It's so that each device can be treated individually if desired!

[musyc]

Do (general) you anticipate that more people would want varying views per device instead of consistency across all? Like, is the expectation that the majority of users would want their little phone and medium tablet to show different layouts because of screen size? Or is it more that the varied-view is a common practice on lots of websites without allowing users the choice, so people are expected to be familiar with/resigned to it happening?

[fu]

More of the second (screen size making a difference).

[phlox]

I feel like a total doofus for asking this, but: where is "Additional Options"? I looked in the location linked to (after I'd already gotten there by navigating myself--they took me to the same place). While I have the overall "Turn off mobile view for this device" I couldn't find anything called "Additional Options," nor anything that offered the functionality without the label.

I did a search on the word "Additional," just to see if I was skimming over it, and the word does no appear anywhere on the "Display" tab of my Account Settings area.

Is this because of the theme I am using? That's pretty much the only idea I have at this point. . . . ?

[fu]

Oh oops. That link should go to https://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options Thanks for pointing that out!

[phlox]

Thanks! https://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options worked much better!