On Sat, 13 Jul 2013 08:13:03 +0100, Tobie Langel <[email protected]>
wrote:
It is not uncommon for mobile experiences to rely on the accelerometer
as an input mechanism, for example to control page scrolling (e.g.
Instapaper) or for gameplay.
In such cases, auto-rotation of the viewport is completely disruptive to
the user's experience and needs to be inhibited.
Indeed, this ruins accelerometer-based games.
It's also slightly problematic in applications using compass (augumented
reality or navigation apps pointing user towards a direction) -
auto-rotation misfires when person rotates themselves while holding phone
in front of them.
Inhibiting auto-rotation may be sufficient, and shouldn't be too annoying.
Browsers might even have option to unlock rotation (e.g. Instapaper shows
rotation lock switch when you shake the device).
I suspect that games designed for being locked in a particular screen
orientation will be forcing users to rotate device to desired orientation
first (e.g. I can imagine racing games to refuse to start the race until
user rotates device to landscape) — but maybe that's a good thing?
Since specific, locked screen orientation is mostly needed in games, and
forced rotation is disruptive to other things on the screen (e.g. moving
buttons/addressbar to other physical edge of the screen), maybe it should
be tied to the Fullscreen API?
element.requestFullscreen({orientation:'landscape',
autorotation:false})
--
regards, Kornel
