Alt text:

Twitter post by Daniel Feldman (@d_feldman): Linux is the only major operating system to support diagonal mode (credit [Twitter] @xssfox). Image shows an untrawide monitor rotated about 45 degrees, with a horizontal IDE window taking up a bottom triangle. A web browser and settings menu above it are organized creating a window shape almost like a stepped pyramid.

Edit: alt text

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        446·
        11 months ago

        That, right there, is a perfect example of why folks need to stop trying to shoehorn web apps everywhere they don’t belong. It’s a use-case for a proper native mobile app if ever there was one.

        • owsei@lemmy.world
          27·
          11 months ago

          even if it’s just mobile

          you already have to handle landscape/portrait mode

          now imagine having to handle angled

          • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
            344·
            11 months ago

            That’s why you should’ve just handled arbitrary rotations instead of inventing a finite predefined set of orientation “modes” in the first place.

            Things get a lot easier in the long run if you aggressively look for commonalities and genericize the code that handles them instead of writing bunches of one-off special cases.

            • owsei@lemmy.world
              10·
              11 months ago

              true

              however

              everything would be fluid in the layout and you would need to set what should go on top of what. And having this feature doesn’t seem worth the hassle of making if work, or even using it.

              Imagine trying to type in a ‘fluid’ keyboard

              TBH tho, seems like a cool gimmick for some apps.

            • rambaroo@lemmy.world
              53·
              11 months ago

              That’s called over-engineering for use cases that don’t and won’t exist. Please lecture us some more though.

        • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
          10·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, but I don’t want to have an app on my phone for a store I go to once. I don’t give a fuck if the page is ugly.

          • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
            114·
            11 months ago

            That just means it shouldn’t be a native app or a web app, but instead should be a plain ol’ webpage that doesn’t try to do app-y things in the first place. The notion that web pages have any legitimate reason to know your viewport size (let alone anything at all about the screen hardware itself) is like one of those “statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged” memes, except not satirical.

            Seriously: literally the entire defining principle of HTML (well, aside from the concept of “hyperlinks”) is that the client has the freedom to decide how the page should be rendered, but misguided – or megalomaniacal – graphic designers webmasters front-end web “devs” have been trying to break it ever since.

            • rambaroo@lemmy.world
              51·
              11 months ago

              Lol - in your other comment you suggested that web devs key off of screen rotation to resize the page, but now you’re saying the client shouldn’t know anything about the viewport at all? Which is it? And why would the rotation angle be useful if I don’t know the aspect ratio of the screen? Or are we now assuming that widescreen will be a thing forever? I thought your ingenius idea was to be able to handle any use case.

              • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                11 months ago

                Lol - in your other comment you suggested that web devs key off of screen rotation to resize the page, but now you’re saying the client shouldn’t know anything about the viewport at all? Which is it?

                Legitimate apps key off screen rotation do fancy stuff. Web pages let the browser render them and don’t try to do fancy stuff. It’s not that fucking hard.

                • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  Follow up question, would it ideally work like the old Java Applets then, where you have to explicitly ask to launch a web app?

            • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
              3·
              11 months ago

              or a web app, but instead should be a plain ol’ webpage

              I did not know about that distinction.

              Hmm, so are there actual inadequacies in the browser-rendered standards that lead people to do this? I’d buy that it’s purely webpage sponsors wanting to be an all-powerful decider that controls what everyone sees and possibly thinks, but on the other hand I don’t know enough about browser rendering and page design to be sure. All my webpages are pretty spartan and scream “backend guy”.

              It’d sure be nice if we could go back to circa-2012 with no popups or stupid bloat.

            • CallumWells@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              I sort of agree with you to a degree, but I also think that the browser having knowledge of the size of your viewport actually has some use. Now, I would probably like it more if all webpages were just made with the restriction of not knowing the viewport size since that would dictate some design choices. Cellphones can just scroll around the page anyways. They should be second class citizens on the internet anyway in my opinion. The smartphone has been one of the worst inventions for the human race with how much it seems to isolate a lot of people more than connecting them.

          • rambaroo@lemmy.world
            31·
            11 months ago

            The thread OP has an axe to grind against web devs because he thinks they’ve ruined the Internet.

        • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          This could totally be adapted into a game for a very interesting immersive experience. Imagine entire worlds of gameplay that adapted to the orientation of your viewport.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
          32·
          11 months ago

          shoehorn web apps everywhere they don’t belong

          Who is doing that? In my experience, “web apps” are on the web or occasionally on desktop and are fine. Slack for example, is a fabulous desktop app and has used web tech from day one to great success

          • Zangoose@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            71·
            11 months ago

            VS code is an electron app, there are a few others that have a simple enough purpose that they shouldn’t be using a whole dedicated chrome engine to function.

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
              21·
              11 months ago

              Vs code is an exemplary app and supports what I’m saying. As far as others…what’s the right amount of complexity for using electron? Imo the maintenance advantages alone almost justify using it. It’s not appropriate for every app but slack and vs code are pretty stellar examples of how well it can work.

              • Zangoose@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                71·
                11 months ago

                VS code is a good app in spite of using electron, not because of it. There’s no reason a simple plaintext editor needs to allocate 300MB of ram even without extensions just to launch, and there is definitely no reason a plaintext editor should require compiling chromium to build from source.

                Slack is fine, but only when you exclusively use slack. Throw in an actual browser, discord, VS Code, Whatsapp, teams (?), etc. each with their own chromium instance and now your 16GB of ram are being eaten up at idle.

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  I mean yeah it’s a little heavy. Same trade off everyone makes every time they load a web app of any kind.

                  I run a lot of those apps concurrently and I don’t have issues with not having enough ram.

    • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
      71·
      11 months ago

      Congratulations. In almost 30 years, this is the first thing that finally made me want to throw my phone when I saw it.

        • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          I’ve had cell phones for 30 years. Never mentioned anything about them being smart the whole time.

          • fidodo@lemmy.world
            12·
            10 months ago

            What would you be able to see on a 30 year old cell phone that would make you throw it? A weird number?

            • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
              21·
              10 months ago

              i’d like to know what hallucinogen you’re on or neurological damage you have, as you keep responding to things i never said-- i never mentioned a 30 year-old cell phone.

              • fidodo@lemmy.world
                12·
                10 months ago

                So “in 30 years” you never wanted to throw your non existent cell phone. Your original comment just doesn’t make sense.

                • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
                  21·
                  10 months ago

                  It doesn’t make sense to you, because something is very wrong with your brain.

                  Best of luck with that

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        11 months ago

        Linux phones aren’t supported because it’s an Xorg feature. Usually Linux phones use Wayland for the better (touch) experience. If someone wanted to they could implement it on a Wayland compositor, but given that no other OS I know of supports diagonal mode, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

    • blackluster117@possumpat.io
      21·
      11 months ago

      Honestly though, I have an iPhone SE and holding it diagonally like that is pretty comfy. Could actually be on to something here.