[Android]why can't "text reflow" be fixed instead of using the unreliable broken "text inflation"?
text inflation as a desktop-to-mobile-view conversion doesn't work, and can never be fixed. it will always either fail to make important parts of websites readable, or completely unhinge them.
opera mini, opera mobile(now classic) and opera for android show how well "text reflow" works for desktop pages on mobile devices. before the opera mobile EOL I never needed mobile versions of pages.
firefox for android already has a text reflow feature, but it is hidden away and unusable because of 2 easily fixable problems. 1. "text inflation", it's completely unnecessary to require enlarged text in order to reflow but with this feature disabled(text to smallest size) there is no reflow. 2. "fixed zoom", currently double-tap zooming will always put the text fullscreen(which on a desktop layout is still too small) a "fixed zoom" option that always zooms a set % regardless of where you double-tap should allow zooming in to a level where text is readable and should force "text reflow" to reflow text to screen-width.
so why are we still stuck with either messy or unreadable text on desktop pages?
All Replies (2)
This is because requesting a desktop site on a mobile device does not take into account the quality requirements of the device's screen size.
Reflow and double tap to zoom are tools/features used to navigate through webpages that may or not fit to a particular screensize. Having the desktop site request feature off by default assumes that more of the sites now have a mobile version of their site, and currently Firefox does not have a desktop to mobile view conversion, but does have a resize to try to fit the page to the screen. However the device profile also is a factor into what the web sever will send to the Get request from the browser.
you seem to have missed the point of my post.
firefox has 2 methods to make desktop pages readable on phones, "text reflow" and "text inflation". text reflow is disabled by default and doesn't work properly because of a few unchangeable settings, even though it is proven to be a very effective and reliable method to make desktop pages work on phones by opera's browsers. and text inflation is broken because it can never accurately determine what can and can't be inflated.
and my question is why we're still stuck with using text inflation when text reflow is a much better option?