site-schemed pages should horizontally re-wrap or scroll when necessary

[the_shoshanna]

Title:
site-schemed pages should horizontally re-wrap or scroll when necessary

Area:
site interface

Summary:
Some site-schemed pages, when in a narrow window, lose information off the right edge without providing a scroll bar, so there is no way to see the full page without widening the window.

Description:
I don't like reading long lines of text and like to be able to put two windows next to each other, so I normally keep browser windows at a width that makes most text lines 80-100 characters long. Most web pages either re-wrap themselves as needed to accommodate whatever width the window is at (far preferable) or show a horizontal scroll bar to allow access to the full width. Site-schemed pages, however (I think that's the right term) do not; some text re-wraps, but often there are elements (such as text boxes) that do not wrap or scale themselves, and if the window is too narrow to show their full width, no scroll bar appears. I tested this in three browsers.

For an example of what I mean, check out this jpg of my "manage other sites" page: http://thisland.ca/siteimages/screencap.jpg. Note that the banner at the top, with my default icon and the DW logo, has scrunched itself together nicely to fit, but the rest of the page is falling off the right edge of the window, with no scroll bar. Moreover (presumably because the window, having no horizontal scroll bar, doesn't "know" it's not wide enough), clicking the green zoom button in the top left corner (I'm on a Mac) does not widen the window; I have to grab and drag the corner to widen it.

Windows should re-wrap as much as possible, but when it's not possible, they should always show a horizontal scroll bar! I cannot think of any problems or drawbacks involved in having that happen.

Poll #2944 site-schemed pages should horizontally re-wrap or scroll when necessary

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
48 (96.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
2 (4.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[kyrielle]

Added note: they should also rewrap/scroll usefully. While testing this to see what you experience, I scrunched my window narrow enough that on the top navbar, the post/reading page/invite someone links were over the Dreamwidth logo at the left...which links to the Dreamwdith main page...which took precedence over their links as far as I could tell (or just made them really hard to target, as well as really hard to read). (I'm in tropo purple.)

[syntheid]

This drives me nuts when I'm on my phone, yes. I've kind of got it down to just hit the link I want, but sometimes the overlap just makes me hit the logo instead.

[azurelunatic]

jd's phone doesn't do horizontal scrolling at all. Some websites wind up kind of amazing, in the bad way.

[ratcreature]

Not really about the suggestion, but when I find text columns too wide I use a bookmarklet that I click that reformats the page display to a narrower width (I set it to 65%) and adds whitespace, without resizing my browser window.

[msilverstar]

+1 (can I say +10?)

this has driven me nuts for months!

[eruthros]

Oh man YES -- the worst case for me has been with a friend who posts comics, and who finds that the images cut off before the last panel, and there's no scrollbar!

[feathertail]

A webcomic I used to have on my reading page kept getting covered by the sidebar.