316466 - zoom lense idea from asa

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[chris hofmann]

"zoom lense" - a strip across about the middle 1/3rd of the page where text gets fish-eyed. I think if there was a feature that you could turn on that gave you a
strip across the center of the browser window that was zoomed a couple of font sizes, then you could see the whole page, but where you were reading, in the middle of the page, the fonts would be large and more easily read.

Comment 1

[/\/\arcio Galli]

Asa, 

Do we neeed cairo for this? or you are talking about Markup based zoom? 

The only way I see to implement markup-based ZOOM would be to get a DOM range and put some new Style rule in it, but this would expand affect the entire DOM. 

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Attachment: minimo with magnifying lense

My thinking was that we zoom everything (might require cairo). We'd want to also alter the style to change the line height, the word and letter spacing, though, and maybe reduce padding and margins so we could fit the zoomed content into roughly the same space as is obscured by the normal sized content. That would'nt have to exact, but the closer the better. 

Here's a quick sketch of what I was thinking.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

It'd be even nicer if the top and bottom edges of the "lense" would receded in magnification over a three or four pixel gradient. (I can dream, can't I?)

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

http://paularmstrongdesigns.com/weblog/css/navigation-magnification

Comment 5

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

this needs to be a bit more flushed out.  I created a page that people can brainstorm about such ideas:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/User_Experience

Comment 6

[Syd Logan]

I sorta like the way things work in iPhone in text fields, you have a spherical blob that you can move around with your finger, it is zoomed in mostly in the center of the blob and falls off as you go away from the center ever so slightly.

My idea would be to use such a blob with the stylus or finger to find a center region you want to zoom in on, but then when you release, it simply zooms the entire viewport to contain that region and some fixed area around it. It's just a shortcut for scrolling then zooming. Then normal zoom in and zoom out can be used to adjust or return to 100% mode.

Comment 7

[Syd Logan]

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a6zoVm3TS4 for a demo of the iPhone functionality.

Comment 8

[Christian Sejersen]

This sounds very interesting as it usually requires multiple clicks to find and zoom in on a specific region.