Why Aren’t Browsers Automatically Optimized for Smaller Screens?
jkkmobile has a nice little five-minute vid that helps netbook owners optimize their browser for small, low-resolution screens. Even though there are a number of plug-ins to do this in Firefox, he does this without any such add-ons. He’s just intelligently using the native settings and options to maximize the browsing area and it’s a great walk through for folks that might not know about these settings. But after I watched it, a thought came to mind. Maybe even a challenge to the folks at Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera just to name a few. Here’s what I’m thinking…
Why aren’t the browser developers truly acknowledging the tens of millions (and growing) of netbooks out there? As jkkmobile proved, there are plenty of native settings that can be optimized for smaller displays. Tech savvy users likely know about the tweaks like small icons, moving browser buttons, and hiding toolbars. But what about the non-techie folks that simply aren’t aware of such settings? I’d bet there’s a huge overlap between this audience and netbook owners. There’s likely probably more non-geeks that own a low-cost netbook than folks like us that live, eat and breathe this stuff.
So why can’t we use the browser and the computer together in a more intelligent way on these devices? I’m thinking of a few “display preset” profiles that already have these optimizations enabled. Maybe even have an option that adjusts the browser settings based on the device display resolution. I don’t know if there are any hooks between browser and OS that could pass the screen resolution value to browser, but I’d love to see it.
Now I wouldn’t want these proposed profiles to be hardened into stone. Personal computing is personal and should always be so. I’m simply trying to come up with a better starting point; one that could be further customized, enabled or disabled. It shouldn’t be a plug-in either. This should be a native function of the browser to have it adopt a little more to the device being used. Is it just me or does this sound potentially useful?
Yep, it would be super if browser would notice low resolution and ask if user wants to choose optimized setting.
.. same goes with other apps too.
it might be useful, but it might be better to base the decision on something more than just screen resolution… like physical screen size and PPI(DPI). then, if we ever see them, small sized high-PPI screens would get the optimizations too.
anyway, the average user would also have a lot of room if they didn’t install every stupid google toolbar, yahoo toolbar, and windows live toolbar that comes their way. =P
The problem is far worse with other programs such as Windows Live Mail, as I outlined at http://www.segal.org/tablet/live/.
I did something similar with Firefox on my Aspire One. However instead of turning the features off completely, I use the autoHideStatusbar and Hide Menubar plugins. That way I can easily and quickly bring the features back temporarily if I need them.
Try using Opera:
- it’s available for every current OS under the sun,
- has a lot of minimal skins available couple of right clicks away,
- can reflow pages,
- and does zooming properly.
- no add-ons necessary.
- in case you want to fiddle with it, very customizable.
I installed it on my Aspire One, never looked at pre-installed old version Firefox again.
I must admit I am used to Opera on my regular 2×24″ desktop too, so you can consider me biased. But do give it a spin for a couple of days.
JKK did a great job of working with FF out of the box. I setup my FF (even on my big screens) to just use a single bar at the top. I like the screen space. I will note that the Personal Menu extension for FF offers the ability to quickly hide the Menu bar. It is the one UI altering extension I use.
just use the F11 key in firefox, turns the resolution to 1024 x 768, then hit F11 again to toggle out.
Also, try Tiny Menu, it collapses Menu items in a cascade button.
I agree with the premise, but wonder if there are really tens of millions of netbooks out there. I’m a big fan of F11 (Firefox, IE) on Windows. Sadly, no such luck on OS X. (Opera has a kiosk mode, but tabs are not readily visible.)
OS X has the little blue button in the upper right corner that works very well with Firefox.