Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
Device-level orientation lock deals with different use-cases than the ones we are discussing here. It let's the user force the device into either of portrait or landscape mode whatever the physical orientation of the device actually is. The main reason for this need is that orientation of the device is relative to the Earth's gravitational field and not to the physical position of the user. That's typically annoying when you want to read while lying down on your side. If the device's orientation was obtained relative to the user's face (e.g. by means of a camera doing facial recognition) the need for a device-level orientation-lock might not even exist. Document-level orientation lock is different. It isn't so much about enabling applications to change orientation as it is about signaling to the UA that UI only exists in one of portrait or landscape mode. A good analogy is to think of photos or movies. The device's orientation (or the dimensions of the screen) on which they are displayed won't suddenly modify their characteristics. A picture in portrait mode is a picture in portrait mode. Rotating it sideways won't suddenly turn it (hah!) into a picture in landscape mode. How the device decides to display it (cropping it, surrounding is with black bars, asking the user to rotate the device) is an orthogonal issue. Of course there are a number of points of friction (e.g. how do you handle document-level and system-level oreientation-locks conflict, what happens when you browse through a series of documents which have different document-level orientation-locks, etc.), but these are best discussed as part of the WG's work rather than in a preamble to decide whether or not this is worth adding to the charter. --tobie On 2/10/12 6:28 AM, timeless timel...@gmail.com wrote: Personally I consider this a QoI issue for UAs. There will be lots of web pages that won't support / use this auto-rotation suppressor. UAs will need and want to let their users deal with this. The BlackBerry PlayBook for instance has an item for it: swipe in from top right corner, tap the orientation widget, select lock orientation, tap the application content area, move on with life. I'm not saying it's perfect, and I've been planning to write out more detailed proposals for more advanced things, but sometimes adding a web-API doesn't really help the user. This isn't a web page problem, it's a system problem, and the user will benefit from having a *single* and *consistent* method for addressing it across all applications, native, web, and web written by other people who decide to put buttons and widgets in places the user won't expect. Disclaimer: while my employer isn't endorsing my opinion, I'm happy to use its products. On 2/8/12, Tobie Langel to...@fb.com wrote: The general use case is any UI that's been designed exclusively for portrait or landscape mode because displaying it in the other mode either doesn't make any sense (e.g. most platform games), requires some artifice that the designer wanted to avoid (e.g. to function in landscape mode, e-readers rely on the book metaphor), or isn't cost effective (i.e. it requires designing two radically different UIs instead of one). --tobie On 2/8/12 9:16 AM, Marcos Caceres w...@marcosc.com wrote: On Wednesday, 8 February 2012 at 07:39, Charles Pritchard wrote: In case it's needed; use case: User is drawing a sketch on their mobile phone and their rotation is intentional as if they are working with a physical piece of paper. or a car game where the driving is controlled by how much the device is rotated (you want the orientation locked, probably to landscape)Š There are other games, like Rolando [1], that make use of both portrait, landscape, and a kind of fixed modeŠ where the orientation is fixed no matter what way you rotate the screen (think of rotating a video cameraŠ the world in the view finder stays fixed) [1] http://rolando.ngmoco.com/ -- Sent from my mobile device
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
Absolutely. This is currently handled at the application level by the games themselves, which is ridiculous. If there was a proper way for a game to specify in what orientation it was supposed to be played, then conflicts between the game's needs and the device's current orientation could be handled at system level and be consistent across all applications. --tobie On 2/10/12 8:29 AM, Jordan Dobson jordandob...@gmail.com wrote: One way people do this today already is to use media queries to hide the UI when it's rotated into an orientation they don't support. Example: * http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ * http://cl.ly/E5fw * http://cl.ly/E56V Hope this helps if anyone is looking to do anything similar in the near future. - Jordan On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 9:28 PM, timeless timel...@gmail.com wrote: Personally I consider this a QoI issue for UAs. There will be lots of web pages that won't support / use this auto-rotation suppressor. UAs will need and want to let their users deal with this. The BlackBerry PlayBook for instance has an item for it: swipe in from top right corner, tap the orientation widget, select lock orientation, tap the application content area, move on with life. I'm not saying it's perfect, and I've been planning to write out more detailed proposals for more advanced things, but sometimes adding a web-API doesn't really help the user. This isn't a web page problem, it's a system problem, and the user will benefit from having a *single* and *consistent* method for addressing it across all applications, native, web, and web written by other people who decide to put buttons and widgets in places the user won't expect. Disclaimer: while my employer isn't endorsing my opinion, I'm happy to use its products. On 2/8/12, Tobie Langel to...@fb.com wrote: The general use case is any UI that's been designed exclusively for portrait or landscape mode because displaying it in the other mode either doesn't make any sense (e.g. most platform games), requires some artifice that the designer wanted to avoid (e.g. to function in landscape mode, e-readers rely on the book metaphor), or isn't cost effective (i.e. it requires designing two radically different UIs instead of one). --tobie On 2/8/12 9:16 AM, Marcos Caceres w...@marcosc.com wrote: On Wednesday, 8 February 2012 at 07:39, Charles Pritchard wrote: In case it's needed; use case: User is drawing a sketch on their mobile phone and their rotation is intentional as if they are working with a physical piece of paper. or a car game where the driving is controlled by how much the device is rotated (you want the orientation locked, probably to landscape)Š There are other games, like Rolando [1], that make use of both portrait, landscape, and a kind of fixed modeŠ where the orientation is fixed no matter what way you rotate the screen (think of rotating a video cameraŠ the world in the view finder stays fixed) [1] http://rolando.ngmoco.com/ -- Sent from my mobile device -- Jordan Dobson ? Designer / Developer ? 425-444-8014 ? JordanDobson.com http://JordanDobson.com
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
On Wednesday, 8 February 2012 at 07:39, Charles Pritchard wrote: In case it's needed; use case: User is drawing a sketch on their mobile phone and their rotation is intentional as if they are working with a physical piece of paper. or a car game where the driving is controlled by how much the device is rotated (you want the orientation locked, probably to landscape)… There are other games, like Rolando [1], that make use of both portrait, landscape, and a kind of fixed mode… where the orientation is fixed no matter what way you rotate the screen (think of rotating a video camera… the world in the view finder stays fixed) [1] http://rolando.ngmoco.com/
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
The general use case is any UI that's been designed exclusively for portrait or landscape mode because displaying it in the other mode either doesn't make any sense (e.g. most platform games), requires some artifice that the designer wanted to avoid (e.g. to function in landscape mode, e-readers rely on the book metaphor), or isn't cost effective (i.e. it requires designing two radically different UIs instead of one). --tobie On 2/8/12 9:16 AM, Marcos Caceres w...@marcosc.com wrote: On Wednesday, 8 February 2012 at 07:39, Charles Pritchard wrote: In case it's needed; use case: User is drawing a sketch on their mobile phone and their rotation is intentional as if they are working with a physical piece of paper. or a car game where the driving is controlled by how much the device is rotated (you want the orientation locked, probably to landscape)Š There are other games, like Rolando [1], that make use of both portrait, landscape, and a kind of fixed modeŠ where the orientation is fixed no matter what way you rotate the screen (think of rotating a video cameraŠ the world in the view finder stays fixed) [1] http://rolando.ngmoco.com/
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
There's no current spec for this, but it's on our plate: http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/CharterChanges#Additions_Agreed --tobie On 2/8/12 3:06 AM, Michael[tm] Smith m...@w3.org wrote: About portrait-landscape auto rotation on current mobile/tablet browsers/platforms: If a user has auto rotation set on their mobile or tablet, I know it's possible for a particular native application to override that setting and stay in whatever screen orientation it wants. My question is if it is currently possible for a Web application to do the same thing; that is, to prevent the browser on the device from auto-rotating into a different mode. --Mike -- Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike/+
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
Tobie Langel to...@fb.com, 2012-02-08 07:17 +: There's no current spec for this, but it's on our plate: http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/CharterChanges#Additions_Agreed Thanks for the link and I see that links to mail from Robin a week ago. Now embarrassed that I'm not caught up on my public-webapps list mail :) (Been away working on some other things for over the last week.) --Mike -- Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike/+
Re: Enabling a Web app to override auto rotation?
In case it's needed; use case: User is drawing a sketch on their mobile phone and their rotation is intentional as if they are working with a physical piece of paper. -Charles On Feb 7, 2012, at 11:17 PM, Tobie Langel to...@fb.com wrote: There's no current spec for this, but it's on our plate: http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/CharterChanges#Additions_Agreed --tobie On 2/8/12 3:06 AM, Michael[tm] Smith m...@w3.org wrote: About portrait-landscape auto rotation on current mobile/tablet browsers/platforms: If a user has auto rotation set on their mobile or tablet, I know it's possible for a particular native application to override that setting and stay in whatever screen orientation it wants. My question is if it is currently possible for a Web application to do the same thing; that is, to prevent the browser on the device from auto-rotating into a different mode. --Mike -- Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike/+
