Opera 6 and its Zoom

[Stevo]

Ran across an interesting quandry when reviewing a website. The site had a flash animation. When viewed in Opera 6 it loaded and ran fine. However when zoomed in Opera, the browser froze, and just showed the zoomed animation. (3 times it normal size vertically and horizontally.)

I started checking this out and found out that Opera 6's zoom, zooms everything, not just text as NS 6.2 does. This includes images as well as flash animations. So if you expect a graphic to always be a certain size, turns out to not be so when a user zooms in Opera. Can lead to some pretty pixelated graphics.

Now obviously this will lead to problems with pixel perfect designs. I am wondering what designers will do about it. It is analogous to IE assuming that when a designer sets absolute (pt) or semi-absolute (px) font size, IE wont let the user increase font size, frustrating users with poor eye sight when the font is set at 8 px or pt.

I have to assume since IE is the most common browser by far, and designers dont seem to care about the font issue, that they will care even less about Opera's zoom and what it will do to their designs.

Thoughts anyone?

stevo

[Phil.Roberts]

My thoughts are that if you want pixel-perfect designs then you should go into print design rather than web. The www is not a piece of paper where you can control the exact layout and look.

I can use my browser setting to completely alter the look of pages if I want to. You cant do a thing about this, and you should stop trying.


Just my 1p.

[mattjacob]

Well-said, Phil. The current methods for marking up pages are designed to get the information across, not to make it look nice. More recently, however, style sheets have come across as the way to pretty it up, with the information still remaining paramount.

Don't try to make it perfect, because someone will always wreck it.

[Anarchos]

Plus no one uses opera.

[mattjacob]

Originally posted by Anarchos
Plus no one uses opera.

I use Opera. What you meant to say was, "only people who don't care about standards don't use Opera."

[Phil.Roberts]

Opera has been my main browser for over a year now. I only use IE for page testing and reading my hotmail. Plus IE6 is so bloated it wears out my PC in no time if I were to use it regularly....

Hell I dont even need IE for hotmail as it actually works in Opera now (MSN used to block it out) but Im just too lazy to move the bookmark.

[Anarchos]

On my site Opera use is .13%. To put that into perspective, Netscape 3 has 2.26%.

[Joel]

While you're at it, you better make sure your site looks perfect in Mosaic.

[Stevo]

Originally posted by Joel
While you're at it, you better make sure your site looks perfect in Mosaic.

yes. In case anybody wondering what I am talking about. This is a screen shot that illustrates what the opera zoom does to a layout.

Example

[michaelwheaton]

I have been using Opera for well over a year now, and I think the zoom function is great. On sites that use layers it can get messed up, but for almost everything else it is fine. When I'm reading I put it up to around 130% so that I don't have to squint to read, and I can sit further back.

[Stevo]

just a quick follow-up on this subject. This feature of Opera does allow a designer to design for higher resolutions.
one of the problems with designing for all resolutions is that graphics cannot be resized without complicated scripting. so a graphic that looks good at 800 x 600 looks puny at 1600 x 1200.

since opera's zoom also magnifies the image this problem is solved for opera users. an image that looks good zoomed 100% at 800x600, looks same zoomed 200% at 1600x1200.

can see this at screen shots

stevo