freebsd.org looks awful in Jelly browser

[eternal_noob]

May be an edge case because nobody uses it, but the browser shipped with LineageOS, Jelly, presents this when browsing freebsd.org:



Not directly related to the forums, but it's hard to find the link in this case!

Btw., other pages render fine, e.g.

 

[neel]

As a LineageOS user (and someone working on patches for it), Jelly Browser like many LOS apps is very barebones. Most people using LOS download Chrome or another browser. I personally use Firefox on my phone.

Jelly Browser can't even download files without renaming them to a generic name. WHY?

 

[eternal_noob]

I like Jelly. Doesn't spy on you and is super fast.

 

[neel]

In comparison, I hate Jelly.

If you want something more functional while still not spying, you could try Bromite.

 

[mer]

eternal_noob Does Jelly allow you to set a minimum font size? If so, what did you set it to? I ran into similar issues rendering the forum in Firefox if the minimum font size was set to about 16 or greater. Setting it to say 12 and then zooming in fixed it.

 

[Alexander88207]

This browser and almost any other has a button for viewing in desktop mode for such cases.

 

[eternal_noob]

Bromite

I'll look at it, thanks!

Does Jelly allow you to set a minimum font size?

No. The configuration options are pretty minimal, you can't do that.

a button for viewing in desktop mode

Yes, freebsd.org looks much better in "desktop mode".

But if i was the Foundation, i would not rely on such dirty tricks. I would code my site in a way so it looks good by default.

 

[mer]

Ahh, I did not realize that this was an app on a phone. So "never mind"

 

[zirias@]

Although this is certainly far from perfect (there really should be CSS breakpoints avoiding the need to zoom and scroll horizontally on a small portrait display), it does render in a usable way:

Rendering some graphical accident like your browser does is the browser's fault.

 

[elgrande]

I think the problem is just a missing responsive layout for small screens.
If I resize the browser on my laptop to a somewhat mobile screen size, it looks the same.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Without looking at the source, I'm sure that breakpoints are not high on the list of things to work on for the site, though they should be written into the markup from the very beginning and only get harder to insert later.

EDIT: Took a quick look and I was right. Only a minimal for screen and print but not viewport sizes.

 

[zirias@]

If I resize the browser on my laptop to a somewhat mobile screen size, it looks the same.

This won't do the things mobile browsers will do in absence of any CSS breakpoints. Instead, use F12 "devtools" and click on the icon for tablets and mobiles to see how chromium would render it on a mobile device. That's also what you can see in the screenshot I posted above.

Yes, the missing breakpoints are a quality problem. But a sensible mobile browser is still expected to render something sensible.

 

[eternal_noob]

The browser renders what is being presented, it doesn't do any magic.

The forums look good in Jelly and are much more complex.



It clearly is the fault of the website.

 

[zirias@]

The browser renders what is being presented, it doesn't do any magic.

Nope. A mobile browser must render a scaled version of a website that obviously doesn't have a specific style for small screens. That's how mobile browsing always worked.

It clearly is the fault of the website.

It's something missing for a "top quality" website style. But rendering a graphical accident is the browser's fault.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

A mobile browser must render a scaled version of a website that obviously doesn't have a specific style for small screens. That's how mobile browsing always worked.

No browser has any responsibility to do such a thing. The closest you will get to that is a browser is required by the specification to handle broken HTML (errors) as best it can but no browser will attempt to fix styling.

 

[zirias@]

drhowarddrfine sure, it's not strictly required to do it. But any sensible mobile browser does it, because otherwise, websites that only have a "desktop style" render in a horribly broken way. Which is btw exactly the reason the viewport meta tag exists (and must be used as soon as your site does have a mobile design).

 

[drhowarddrfine]

But any sensible mobile browser does it, because otherwise, websites that only have a "desktop style" render in a horribly broken way.

No they do not and never have. But maybe you need to define "mobile browser" versus chromium and firefox.

 

[zirias@]

Yep, cause a "real mobile brower" just renders illegible nonsense. I guess I'll stop participating in that "discussion" at that point, thanks.

edit, just for completeness: back then, when "mobile browsing" started (after the inevitable failure of WAP), there was close to no website cotaining any "mobile style", so for anything using CSS boxes for layout, a "virtual viewport" was the only way to have a sane display of a website at all. A mobile browser not implementing that is just broken. In that case, just use a different one.

And again, that doesn't change anything about the fact, that a good quality website nowadays provides specific styles for different screen sizes. So of course there's room for improvement.

 

[mer]

No browser has any responsibility to do such a thing. The closest you will get to that is a browser is required by the specification to handle broken HTML (errors) as best it can but no browser will attempt to fix styling.

Ahh, now we're talking. Isn't (wasn't?) there a standards body that actually defined things like HTML standards and the way browsers were supposed to handle the standard language? And the we started having MS and Google and others adding their own extensions to make thing look blingier/faster/whatever? Like certain websites (banks, other commercial entities) that would only work in Windows?

My opinion, a web browser should handle the standards correctly. Anything beyond that is best effort. I'm not a HTML guy so some of this may be ignorance on my part, but are things like CSS actually part of the standard/standardized? Isn't the website actually being "correct" up to the folks doing the design and coding of it? I imagine it gets tough when user A selects specific fonts and sizes because of their physical needs (old eyes, large dpi monitors, etc) for the web designers to correctly deal with and actually test for.

And again, that doesn't change anything about the fact, that a good quality website nowadays provides specific styles for different screen sizes. So of course there's room for improvement.

The bolded portion I'm going to say "yes, it should" But that still puts the onus on the developers to actually do the work to support it. If the work has not been done, I don't think its the tools fault (browser) if the website doesn't look right, the fault (if there is any fault) goes back on the folks that created the website. Of course they will logically (rightly) put the blame back on whomever gave them the requirements and specs "It was never part of the requirements so we didn't do it"

That last part about assigning blame is meant to be moderately funny/sarcastic, so don't read too much into it.

 

[zirias@]

mer, that's how you'd think it should be, theoretically, in a "perfect world". But history was different:

• media selectors for different viewport sizes, which are required to specifically support smaller screens in any CSS-based layout, are only available in CSS3, a standard that was never officially finished, but has somewhat complete browser support since around ~2012-2015.
• without that, using a CSS layout for a website almost always meant to have your typical desktop screen/window dimensions in mind. Any mobile browser attempting to render such a website in a sane way just had to use the workaround called "virtual viewport", to "fake" a larger screen.

edit: similar inconsitencies exist in other areas as well, e.g. with all these high-dpi displays around, a px in CSS isn't really a pixel any more. If it was, it would break too many layouts (e.g. using bitmapped graphics) that just assume dpi to be somewhere between 72 and 120.

In a nutshell, any mobile browser not implementing all these quirks and workarounds is broken. While HTML itself is just a semantic markup language, anything concering layout in web standards (including CSS up to version 2.1) was never designed for mobile devices.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Isn't (wasn't?) there a standards body that actually defined things like HTML standards and the way browsers were supposed to handle the standard language?

Yes. The W3C now by way of WHATWG

a web browser should handle the standards correctly. Anything beyond that is best effort.

Correct.

are things like CSS actually part of the standard/standardized?

W3C CSS Standard

If the work has not been done, I don't think its the tools fault (browser) if the website doesn't look right, the fault (if there is any fault) goes back on the folks that created the website.

Correct.