Good luck web devs

Zangoose@lemmy.world to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 1450 points –

::: spoiler Alt text: Twitter post by Daniel Feldman (@d_feldman): Linux is the only major operating system to support diagonal mode (credit [Twitter] @xssfox). Image shows an untrawide monitor rotated about 45 degrees, with a horizontal IDE window taking up a bottom triangle. A web browser and settings menu above it are organized creating a window shape almost like a stepped pyramid. :::

Edit: alt text

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Another funny concept

Hmm yes, web dev horrors beyond my comprehension!

That, right there, is a perfect example of why folks need to stop trying to shoehorn web apps everywhere they don't belong. It's a use-case for a proper native mobile app if ever there was one.

even if it's just mobile

you already have to handle landscape/portrait mode

now imagine having to handle angled

That's why you should've just handled arbitrary rotations instead of inventing a finite predefined set of orientation "modes" in the first place.

Things get a lot easier in the long run if you aggressively look for commonalities and genericize the code that handles them instead of writing bunches of one-off special cases.

And this is why my webapp only renders properly on circular displays.

Peak evil - well done. How much is the extra fee to wrap a letterbox around the circle on a conventional aspect ratio?

There's good money in this idea!

Personally I went for the globe display, because I figured that was a more globally applicable format.

true

however

everything would be fluid in the layout and you would need to set what should go on top of what. And having this feature doesn't seem worth the hassle of making if work, or even using it.

Imagine trying to type in a 'fluid' keyboard

TBH tho, seems like a cool gimmick for some apps.

That's called over-engineering for use cases that don't and won't exist. Please lecture us some more though.

You mean the browser handles alignment instead of every single web dev?

Yeah, but I don't want to have an app on my phone for a store I go to once. I don't give a fuck if the page is ugly.

That just means it shouldn't be a native app or a web app, but instead should be a plain ol' webpage that doesn't try to do app-y things in the first place. The notion that web pages have any legitimate reason to know your viewport size (let alone anything at all about the screen hardware itself) is like one of those "statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged" memes, except not satirical.

Seriously: literally the entire defining principle of HTML (well, aside from the concept of "hyperlinks") is that the client has the freedom to decide how the page should be rendered, but misguided -- or megalomaniacal -- graphic designers webmasters front-end web "devs" have been trying to break it ever since.

Lol - in your other comment you suggested that web devs key off of screen rotation to resize the page, but now you're saying the client shouldn't know anything about the viewport at all? Which is it? And why would the rotation angle be useful if I don't know the aspect ratio of the screen? Or are we now assuming that widescreen will be a thing forever? I thought your ingenius idea was to be able to handle any use case.

Lol - in your other comment you suggested that web devs key off of screen rotation to resize the page, but now you’re saying the client shouldn’t know anything about the viewport at all? Which is it?

Legitimate apps key off screen rotation do fancy stuff. Web pages let the browser render them and don't try to do fancy stuff. It's not that fucking hard.

Follow up question, would it ideally work like the old Java Applets then, where you have to explicitly ask to launch a web app?

or a web app, but instead should be a plain ol’ webpage

I did not know about that distinction.

Hmm, so are there actual inadequacies in the browser-rendered standards that lead people to do this? I'd buy that it's purely webpage sponsors wanting to be an all-powerful decider that controls what everyone sees and possibly thinks, but on the other hand I don't know enough about browser rendering and page design to be sure. All my webpages are pretty spartan and scream "backend guy".

It'd sure be nice if we could go back to circa-2012 with no popups or stupid bloat.

I sort of agree with you to a degree, but I also think that the browser having knowledge of the size of your viewport actually has some use. Now, I would probably like it more if all webpages were just made with the restriction of not knowing the viewport size since that would dictate some design choices. Cellphones can just scroll around the page anyways. They should be second class citizens on the internet anyway in my opinion. The smartphone has been one of the worst inventions for the human race with how much it seems to isolate a lot of people more than connecting them.

Huh? How's this an example of web apps being bad?

The thread OP has an axe to grind against web devs because he thinks they've ruined the Internet.

shoehorn web apps everywhere they don't belong

Who is doing that? In my experience, "web apps" are on the web or occasionally on desktop and are fine. Slack for example, is a fabulous desktop app and has used web tech from day one to great success

VS code is an electron app, there are a few others that have a simple enough purpose that they shouldn't be using a whole dedicated chrome engine to function.

Vs code is an exemplary app and supports what I'm saying. As far as others...what's the right amount of complexity for using electron? Imo the maintenance advantages alone almost justify using it. It's not appropriate for every app but slack and vs code are pretty stellar examples of how well it can work.

VS code is a good app in spite of using electron, not because of it. There's no reason a simple plaintext editor needs to allocate 300MB of ram even without extensions just to launch, and there is definitely no reason a plaintext editor should require compiling chromium to build from source.

Slack is fine, but only when you exclusively use slack. Throw in an actual browser, discord, VS Code, Whatsapp, teams (?), etc. each with their own chromium instance and now your 16GB of ram are being eaten up at idle.

I mean yeah it's a little heavy. Same trade off everyone makes every time they load a web app of any kind.

I run a lot of those apps concurrently and I don't have issues with not having enough ram.

This could totally be adapted into a game for a very interesting immersive experience. Imagine entire worlds of gameplay that adapted to the orientation of your viewport.

Why does this low key feel like something I would actually want to use

Yeah, I actually miss this sometimes, when I'm lounging in some weird position. The question is how much the keyboard would suck.

Like all of it.

I'd be awkward to hold at that angle.

No, holding it would be fine in some situations. It's probably resting on a chair arm or something while my head is on the seat.

Because you are not immune to propaganda.

ah yes, i've been propagandized into... wanting my phone to have a diagonal mode

there are very few things more politically neutral than this.

I hear that anti-geometrists are trying to get the pythagorean theorem banned in schools now.

Congratulations. In almost 30 years, this is the first thing that finally made me want to throw my phone when I saw it.

Smart phones haven't existed for 30 years...

I’ve had cell phones for 30 years. Never mentioned anything about them being smart the whole time.

What would you be able to see on a 30 year old cell phone that would make you throw it? A weird number?

i'd like to know what hallucinogen you're on or neurological damage you have, as you keep responding to things i never said-- i never mentioned a 30 year-old cell phone.

So "in 30 years" you never wanted to throw your non existent cell phone. Your original comment just doesn't make sense.

It doesn’t make sense to you, because something is very wrong with your brain.

Best of luck with that

Well now i wanna use it(probably works in linix phone?)

Linux phones aren't supported because it's an Xorg feature. Usually Linux phones use Wayland for the better (touch) experience. If someone wanted to they could implement it on a Wayland compositor, but given that no other OS I know of supports diagonal mode, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Honestly though, I have an iPhone SE and holding it diagonally like that is pretty comfy. Could actually be on to something here.