On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote:
> If the content is sized better for portrait or landscape, then it's > generally good for the user if the mode is forced by the application. > Otherwise the user will have to scroll, or will see content that is > smaller than it otherwise would be. > I disagree completely. Even for landscape videos, I'd strongly prefer that a video not force my phone to portrait. Leave my orientation alone, and vertically letterbox the content, despite that giving a small viewing area. That lets me rotate the device at my convenience, rather than rotating the device on its own, so browser controls don't suddenly jump to a different place (eg. if I decide to back out instead of viewing), and not forcing me to rotate the device if I don't feel the need (eg. if it's a short clip and the small viewing area is sufficient). Changing orientation is disruptive. I can hardly imagine how obnoxious Web browsing would be on a mobile device, if every second page I navigated to decided to flip my device to a different orientation. This feels like the same sort of misfeature as allowing pages to resize the browser window: "best viewed in 800x600" (so we'll force it), "best viewed in portrait" (so we'll force it). -- Glenn Maynard