Ask HN: Tablet Portrait or Landscape by Default?
Several large news websites appear to use landscape locked design such that holding tablet in portrait mode hides things like menubars and adverts mis-display.
Did I miss a briefing where landscape was "the whole point" of owning a tablet?
My partner is definitely landscape first using her tablet. I am consistently portrait normal.
Is this how we split the tribe? Do I fail to enter Canaan because lapped instead of scooping into my hand?
I always use my tablet portrait, for what it's worth. But websites are typically designed with various breakpoints based on your browser window width in virtual pixels. In the old days, we used to accommodate desktop, laptop, mobile, and various tablet sizes. But these days some companies just do a mobile view and a desktop view and leave out the in between (or the ultrawides), and if your screen resolution falls closer to the desktop side, that's what you get :(
You can try changing your zoom or browser settings to see if you can get the mobile view instead.
Which website is this for, BTW?
I use a tablet full time and have not seen this. What large news sites?
Usually web sites hide some elements in a menu widget on narrow displays. The functionality is all there but presented for the display width. Look for the “hamburger” menu, three horizontal lines.
Web sites not designed to display properly at various widths should just scroll horizontally.
Because phones greatly outnumber tablets or computer screens for most web site visits it would surprise me to find a major public web site not optimized for phone display, typically portrait orientation.
The Australian.com, news ltd flagship web in Australia is one which consistently fails to show the hamburger menu.
WSJ and Others render body text partially off screen and it won't scroll: no left margin
This is all in chrome on android 13
Both of those sites work fine for me on an iPad, in both portrait and landscape mode. iOS/iPadOS let you choose to view the desktop site (the browser lies about the user agent), but even in mobile mode those sites work fine. I rarely encounter web sites that don't work on mobile -- for some time now "mobile first" represents the best practice for web site design, because of smartphones.
Maybe something wonky in your setup, I don't know, but as a full-time tablet user I don't see the issue you report.
Android, Chrome. Could well be age of device.
There is off-the-shelf technology to make a website work in both portrait and landscape mode.
But good design is done by hand, and portrait and landscape are two separate designs if aesthetics are important. When someone cares, it is going to be more work, probably more than twice as much.
That more work is doesn't enhance the core function of a news organization. Having a clear way of presenting information is within the core function. A second clear way might be, but audio or video or RSS or Mastadon are probably more likely to be than the other of landscape/portrait.
...Aside, try Ali Express which only works in portrait with the iPad power port pointing down. But as Steve Jobs said...good luck.