Other considerations: landscape mode and minimum font size

Keep in mind when designing your channel pages that users are now able to do two things that potentially can have a major impact on your page layout.

  • Landscape mode: On newer devices that support it, users can switch the page view between portrait and landscape. Web pages are typically designed for viewing in a vertical, portrait mode. M-Business Client currently supports landscape mode on Sony Clie PEG-UX40, Sony Clie PEG-UX50, and Palm Tungsten T3.

  • Minimum font size: On all devices using M-Business Client Version 5.7 or later, users can set a minimum font size that may be larger than what your page specifies. This can affect your page layout.

  • Full screen: On all devices using M-Business Client Version 5.7 or later, users can expand the page view area to fill the full screen. This user control is the least likely impact your page layout, but keep it in mind as you design.

To minimize the negative impact of these two user controls on your page layouts:

  • Control full screen setting programmatically: If the full screen setting is critical on a certain page in your channel, when that page loads you can read and store the current setting, switch to the setting you need, then restore the previous setting when the page unloads. For details, see fullScreen.

  • Size table widths dynamically: Make sure your tables size dynamically so that they will expand to the page margins when in landscape mode, without forcing users to scroll horizontally in portrait mode.

  • Center full-width objects: If you have an important header or graphic that fits exactly in the width of the page in the narrower view of the page, make sure it is centered, so that it changes as little as possible if white space is added for a widened page view.

  • Use small fonts sparingly: Make sure that, wherever small fonts are used, if users increase their size, your dynamically resized layout will be acceptable.

  • Test on a sampling of user devices: Determine the range of devices your users have, decide which ones will be officially supported, and then test your pages to see how they look on different devices with different user settings.