Fix/Increase Scaling for High Res Screens (potentially large images)

[Curufinwe_wins]

This new version of the forum, while being fully-featured at all levels of screen size, has some huge issues with space efficiency and usability on regular sized high resolution displays. Much more of the forum is dominated by the Grey tone, and using half a screen is completely unacceptable. It would be great if we could get the forum to lengthen more to fill the screen and if cornered, down size the left and right side bars to allow for actual readable paragraphs. 

 

Below are some comparisons:

 

Half Screen Current:

 

Half Screen Old:

 

Full Screen Now:

 

Full Screen Then:

Text is allowed to spread much farther around the screen, 10 recent topics are visible instead of 5, and this is on 125% chrome scaling... This new forum doesn't scale for poop at my preferred 100% scaling:

[wyattzx]

This looks to be a responsive design that is particularly friendly to mobile devices with a large amount of vertical space. While it does look odd to me, it also looks like the developers and designers intended this.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, NonaHexa said:

This looks to be a responsive design that is particularly friendly to mobile devices with a large amount of vertical space. While it does look odd to me, it also looks like the developers and designers intended this.

Indeed, but on portrait mode on large mobile screens the right side bar is completely moved into the vertical main column of text. Even this would be a much better solution than cramming it in on the same half width screen.

 

Also this is why it's in suggestions not bugs.

[Beskamir]

Exactly! The stuff on the side should at the very least be user removable. I for one don't want it and by the looks of it you don't want it either. @Slick please make it so that the recent topics stuff that's on the side is removed when you're in a thread.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, ElfFriend said:

Exactly! The stuff on the side should be user removable. I for one don't want it and by the looks of it you don't want it either. @Slick please make it so that the recent topics stuff that's on the side is removed when you're in a thread.

IMHO the choice would be nicer. I can go into the f12 code and remove it, but that doesn't fix how crappy the scaling is on both instances.

[colonel_mortis]

We will look into changing how the forum reacts when it's around 1280px wide (half a 1440p monitor), but unfortunately it's not something that can be easily changed without potentially breaking other things. It is an issue that was identified in the beta though, and is on the list.

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, colonel_mortis said:

We will look into changing how the forum reacts when it's around 1280px wide (half a 1440p monitor), but unfortunately it's not something that can be easily changed without potentially breaking other things. It is an issue that was identified in the beta though, and is on the list.

What about the more easily fixed higher resolution grey space? Just like allowing the screen to scale up to say 2000-3000px instead of whatever it is currently doing?

[colonel_mortis]

7 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

What about the more easily fixed higher resolution grey space? Just like allowing the screen to scale up to say 2000-3000px instead of whatever it is currently doing?

The max width is intentional, because reading very wide content is harder. It makes full use of a 1080p display, but after that the posts would be too wide. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

25 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

The max width is intentional, because reading very wide content is harder. It makes full use of a 1080p display, but after that the posts would be too wide. 

Except that saying thus assumes a specific real life size of resolution (and screen distance).

 

Suppose someone has a 23 inch 1440p monitor, this system would force them to crank up zoom on this site like crazy then crank it down for others.

 

Or worse, suppose someone has a 40 inch 4k monitor at a suitable distance away from them.

 

It would ALWAYS be better to make things too wide than too narrow. I mean the human binocular field of view is 114 degrees, and for a 27 inch 1440p monitor someone has to sit within 17 inches for any issue with monitor width to pop up when reading a full screen.

 

I have to assume based on resolution scaling the screen reports the resolution to the website, so can a fractional value be implemented beyond that to allow better scaling at high resolutions.

 

Is it really so unreasonable to assume the user is operating at a sensible depth form the screen based on their screen size and resolution, and if not why in the world does the scaling cap out at 1080p when clearly the higher pixel count of larger monitors is generally counteracted by sitting father away anyways.

[colonel_mortis]

11 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Except that saying thus assumes a specific real life size of resolution (and screen distance).

 

Suppose someone has a 23 inch 1440p monitor, this system would force them to crank up zoom on this site like crazy then crank it down for others.

 

Or worse, suppose someone has a 40 inch 4k monitor at a suitable distance away from them.

 

It would ALWAYS be better to make things too wide than too narrow. I mean the human binocular field of view is 114 degrees, and for a 27 inch 1440p monitor someone has to sit within 17 inches for any issue with monitor width to pop up when reading a full screen.

 

I have to assume based on resolution scaling the screen reports the resolution to the website, so can a fractional value be implemented beyond that to allow better scaling at high resolutions.

 

Is it really so unreasonable to assume the user is operating at a sensible depth form the screen based on their screen size and resolution, and if not why in the world does the scaling cap out at 1080p when clearly the higher pixel count of larger monitors is generally counteracted by sitting father away anyways.

I use a 1440p monitor, and would say that posts are far more comfortable to read when a width restriction is in place than when it's not:

The issue isn't what you can see, it's how far across it's comfortable to move your eyes.

The content area is already considerably wider than the suggestions for maximum width that I have found online, but making the content area very small doesn't make much sense on a forum - a middle ground has been struck to improve text readability, while also allowing space for rich content.

The majority of text-focussed sites that I've used have a fixed maximum width.

 

It's not possible for the page content to zoom in depending on your screen resolution (on this site, due to the architecture of the CSS), and nor would it be desirable for most people, who don't want the text to become larger just because they're on a higher resolution screen.

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, colonel_mortis said:

I use a 1440p monitor, and would say that posts are far more comfortable to read when a width restriction is in place than when it's not:

The issue isn't what you can see, it's how far across it's comfortable to move your eyes.

The content area is already considerably wider than the suggestions for maximum width that I have found online, but making the content area very small doesn't make much sense on a forum - a middle ground has been struck to improve text readability, while also allowing space for rich content.

The majority of text-focussed sites that I've used have a fixed maximum width.

 

It's not possible for the page content to zoom in depending on your screen resolution (on this site, due to the architecture of the CSS), and nor would it be desirable for most people, who don't want the text to become larger just because they're on a higher resolution screen.

That image you sent is a pretty huge exaggeration. I'm not saying width limits are bad, I'm saying the one in place is stupid.

 

 

Those width suggestions are based on what? 23 inch 1080p screens? 19 inch 768p screens?

 

If you make something that scales well for a 23 inch 1080p screen for example, then on a 27 in 1440p (which is like the second smallest size for 1440p sold) it covers what 60% of the same physical distance AND that isn't accounting for the fact that larger monitors are generally farther away from the user?

 

Have you considered how completely unusable this would be on a sub 40 inch 4k screen?

 

Now perhaps you might say that just use zoom or Windows scaling, but since other sites don't have this issue, and the old site didn't have this issue, I think forcing work arounds for resolutions becoming more and more common by the day is pretty short-sighted by a tech forum.

 

I'm not saying the problem is easy to solve, but that only means you have to try harder. Perhaps using additional (grey monotone) elements to force scaling on lower resolutions while allowing the main section to fill more pixel width when applicable on higher resolution screens.

 

Obviously the best solution would be to allow people to unpin and select the pixel width of all the forum elements in addition to whatever defaults are deemed appropriate. That still may have issues though with people who use different screens (although mobile vs desktop shouldn't matter) and how scaling would be locked to the desired monitor. But in general it would be a good addition for people who dislike the current sidebar elements or want additional earmarked navigation.

 

Again I understand this isn't the easiest problem, and it probably isn't a high priority, but really? 15-25° FoV on a reasonably large monitor in this current implementation is not what I'd call "too wide already".

 

PS: I didn't mean zoom based on resolution. That's the job of Windows Scaling/chrome zoom to make people happy with the fairly standard sized text on this forum. It obviously wouldn't make sense to additionally force larger text based on a higher resolution in addition to those controls. I meant allowing the elements to be a proportion of reported resolution up to higher end groups.

[colonel_mortis]

3 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

That image you sent is a pretty huge exaggeration

That image is what happens if I remove the width restrictions on my 1440p monitor.

 

Before we continue, I should make it clear that I am using a 1440p monitor, so anything to do with 4K is simply based on me adjusting browser to render pages at approximately 4K.

4 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Have you considered how completely unusable this would be on a sub 40 inch 4k screen?

If you're using a smaller display with a high resolution, most websites will be unusable without some sort of DPI scaling or zoom, unless they use large font sizes. Lets look at Google scaled to 4K:

Spoiler

 

When viewed on a small screen, that's hard to read.

If someone has a high resolution display, they will already have some form of scaling enabled.

19 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

and the old site didn't have this issue

Yes it did.

 

19 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Perhaps using additional (grey monotone) elements to force scaling on lower resolutions while allowing the main section to fill more pixel width when applicable on higher resolution screens.

Making the content area wider won't help with readability at all, and will in fact make it worse, certainly beyond a point. You described my screenshot, where the page (not the post) is allowed to expand to just under 2560 horizontal pixels, as "a pretty huge exaggeration". Now imagine how much worse it would be at 4K.

Spoiler

It's pretty bad.

 

I'm not saying that the current width is absolutely perfect, but I don't see what there is to gain from making it much wider. Yes, the space around the side doesn't look that great, but all sites have it at higher resolutions (and many sites cut off considerably lower), and it does improve the readability of the text.

I think if you go and actually look at the width of other sites, you'll be surprised how narrow they actually are. Sure, there are some sites that are not wide, but the significant majority of (reasonably sized) sites are.