Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

For example, if you visit facebook you have to scroll to the right to see it all. Is this caused by MicroB or the facebook website itself? I've noticed this on some other sites, too. Is there any way for it to show the whole site? Thanks.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

???
Swirl your stylus anti clockwise or use volume keys.

And screen is 800x480 and probably quite many webpages are optimized for at least 1024 wide screens.

.edit
btw. I would suggest using facebook lite or touch version.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

I'm not asking how to zoom. I know how to do all that. I'm just wondering why it doesn't show the whole site in the window like most sites. Is it a problem with the browser or something with the website that the browser can't control?

I've tried facebook like but it's missing the notification indicator (posts are flagged as red in the feed instead) and the touch version's news feed items are never real-time like the main site.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

It's a problem with the website itself. It's intended to be used on screens with width of 1024 pixels or more. You can see the same problem occur when you decrease the width of your browser window on a desktop computer.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

The microb browser works exactly the same as a normal desktop browser and doesn't apply any scaling. If the site uses absolute widths for elements and the resultant sizes require more than the 800 pixels of the N900 display, then it won't fit on the screen. A lot of sites are set up with variable widths for elements (set to a percentage of the display area) so these will scale to any size display. This can cause issues with rendering on small displays though, which is why other sites use absolute sizes.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

hmmm. Probably because webpage's desing. You can test this with your desktop computer like this:
- Open facebook.com or whatever webpage to your browser
- Resize window's width with mouse and notice what happens.

"problem" is with website. It wasn't designed for small screens.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Here's how it looks like on my iPhone. See how it shows the entire thing inside the browser? This means it's MicroB that's not allowing the site to be contained inside the browser.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

I have noticed the same problem too, I develop some websites, and one that I am working on recently has been specified to be 930 pixels wide, this then overflows a little bit.

So, I suspect that what happens is that the browser defaults to 800 pixels wide (the width of the screen). The browser tries to diaply the website at 800 pixels wide (just lke any other borwser if you set it to that width), but as the minimum size of the website is set to more, it overflows.

It would be nice though if the browser was a little bit more intelligent, and zoomed out a bit if the website was too wide

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

ive noticed this on engadget as well

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Make sense but why does it look okay on the iPhone picture above? If the website has a minimum size wouldn't it also do it on the iPhone? Maybe Safari is more intelligent or something :\

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Shouldn't browser show EXCATLY what webpage designer has designed?

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Funny. .

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Probably it "brakes" rules and does resizing for sake of usability even tought we could argue that it's completely wrong way of doing stuff.

Right way would be to show webpage as designer has designed it. Users will give feedback to web designers if their webpage doesn't resize correctly to small screens.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

I re-sized Firefox on my computer to 800x480 and it looks like MicroB might be doing what it's supposed to. I wonder what Safari is doing for it to show the whole thing.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Actually by having safari scaling the webpages it sometimes messes up the look of the page.. so it's not really wise of it to scale the webpage.. I would MUCH prefer MicroB show me the REAL page than having it to scale it on the screen...

And it's not a problem it's just acting like how a desktop browser..

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Just a guess, but Apple seem to be very good at the UI, this is really the only reason why the iPhone sells, it's all part of their marketing campaign, so, although the iPhone uses safari, I reckon that they have customised it for their device to make it work in the best way possilbe.

.....and remember, the iPhone is not open source, so will only work on iPhones, whereas Maemo is, and could work on any device with the correct hardware specs, irrelevant of the physical screen size of the device.

With that in mind, the browser works exactly the same as any other main stream browser, ie, firefox, chrome......and probably safari if its on a device other than the iphone/ipods etc.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

I agree that MicroB is doing the right thing and for me to get the full browser experience I'll just have to get used to things being like this for a few websites here and there. Unfortunately, how many sites do you know that are optimized for 480x800? Probably not very many so this is going to be an annoying side effect of the "real" browser experience on a cell phone.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

The iphone is simply ZOOMING OUT. Wow, thats amazing because you can do the same thing with the volume keys!

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Too true, many web developers (me included sometimes) are lazy these days, they forget that screen size is still important. The way mobile devices are these day, more websites should have a 'small screen' version of their website......starts to get tricky, but its the only way to make them truely accessible to all

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Except the iPhone does it automatically......if you gave the 2 devices to users that had no idea about technology, they would think the iphone worked better

Don't get me wrong, I hate the iPhone, but I can see what others may think

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Specifying most sizes in percent should do the trick nicely, it should scale pretty good then. Although than can be hard to do ;)

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

I think we all understand that but wouldn't it be nice if it could somehow zoom out to fit any website like Safari? That was kind of my original question.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Safari doesn't zoom. It basically breaks web designers css/html markup and does it own hopefully intelligent decisions.

Re: Why do some websites expand beyond the browser's viewable area?
 

Wouldn't it be nicest of all for web sites to go back to providing information, and leave it to the browser to take care of how that information is rendered?