Help HTC Sense UI Browser vs Stock Android Browser. Different Pinch-To-Zoom Behavior.

richlux · Jul 2, 2010

Have you tried to contact HTC about this? This is the one thing I hate about the Droid Incredible. There should at least be an option to turn it off. I too am curious if there is a workaround for it.

Rich

gigadigit · Jul 2, 2010

I agree with OP on this. It's very annoying when the zoom doesn't send you to the correct spot. I am used to the iPhone's pinch and zoom, and this just doesn't compare with the lag and the redrawing.

richlux · Jul 2, 2010

The concept of redrawing to help you read the screen might make sense on paper, but in practicality it just doesn't work. The phone has no idea what I'm trying to see when I zoom in and by it reformatting automatically, I often lose my place or have to scroll to get to what I was initially zooming in on. I don't see what it's such a big deal to give us the option to turn it off.

Rich

aliveon2legs · Jul 2, 2010

pingpongboss - You've touched on the one thing that really drives me crazy being a new-to-Android iPhone convert. The iPhone browser never reformats text, and that's exactly how it should be, imo. If you double tapped an area on the screen, it would perfectly zoom so that the boarders of that area aligne with the edges of the screen. If you want the text a little larger, just flip it to landscape mode. It worked flawlessly. All of this reformatting junk just makes the browser seem cheap and clunky, to me.

edit - Well, I'm trying the Dolphin Browser with auto-fit turned off. It is an improvement, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I think the problem is, Safari new what you were trying to zoom in on when you double tapped, so it would zoom in only enough to line up the edges of that "area" (for lack of a better word) with the edges of your screen. Dolphin Browser (and every other Android browser I've tried so far) just seems to arbitrarily zoom a certain amount based on your screen position, but not based at all on the actual content of the screen.

I really wish somebody in the Android world would figure this out... soon.

barnacles · Jul 2, 2010

richlux said:
Have you tried to contact HTC about this? This is the one thing I hate about the Droid Incredible. There should at least be an option to turn it off. I too am curious if there is a workaround for it.

Rich

HTC wants this. Thats the point. Its used to you don't have to zoom, read half a sentence, scroll to the right, read the rest, scroll back to the left, right, left, right, left, right.. you get the point

I really like the formatting. Sometimes, yes, it formats it to the point I have to move the screen, but we are talking sliding a finger across glass here..

I guess to each their own

RoboMonkey · Jul 2, 2010

My eyes are bleeding.

I don

RoboMonkey · Jul 2, 2010

I don't think it's going to ever happen until enough Apple converts move over and the developers know there is a market for it. Right now in the droid world I don't think it's an issue for those that have never used and iPhone.

aliveon2legs said:
pingpongboss - You've touched on the one thing that really drives me crazy being a new-to-Android iPhone convert. The iPhone browser never reformats text, and that's exactly how it should be, imo. If you double tapped an area on the screen, it would perfectly zoom so that the boarders of that area aligne with the edges of the screen. If you want the text a little larger, just flip it to landscape mode. It worked flawlessly. All of this reformatting junk just makes the browser seem cheap and clunky, to me.

edit - Well, I'm trying the Dolphin Browser with auto-fit turned off. It is an improvement, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I think the problem is, Safari new what you were trying to zoom in on when you double tapped, so it would zoom in only enough to line up the edges of that "area" (for lack of a better word) with the edges of your screen. Dolphin Browser (and every other Android browser I've tried so far) just seems to arbitrarily zoom a certain amount based on your screen position, but not based at all on the actual content of the screen.

I really wish somebody in the Android world would figure this out... soon.

pingpongboss · Jul 2, 2010

richlux said:
Have you tried to contact HTC about this? This is the one thing I hate about the Droid Incredible. There should at least be an option to turn it off. I too am curious if there is a workaround for it.

Rich

Haven't tried. HTC (and many people here) think it's a great feature so a complaint probably wouldn't go so far. So far the only work around I've found is to flash a custom Froyo ROM. The 2 ROMs that have the browser working right are Hero_Froyo and Avalaunch's EVOlution But the Camera is broken on these ROMs so it's not a perfect solution.

aliveon2legs said:
pingpongboss - You've touched on the one thing that really drives me crazy being a new-to-Android iPhone convert. The iPhone browser never reformats text, and that's exactly how it should be, imo. If you double tapped an area on the screen, it would perfectly zoom so that the boarders of that area aligne with the edges of the screen. If you want the text a little larger, just flip it to landscape mode. It worked flawlessly. All of this reformatting junk just makes the browser seem cheap and clunky, to me.

edit - Well, I'm trying the Dolphin Browser with auto-fit turned off. It is an improvement, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I think the problem is, Safari new what you were trying to zoom in on when you double tapped, so it would zoom in only enough to line up the edges of that "area" (for lack of a better word) with the edges of your screen. Dolphin Browser (and every other Android browser I've tried so far) just seems to arbitrarily zoom a certain amount based on your screen position, but not based at all on the actual content of the screen.

I really wish somebody in the Android world would figure this out... soon.

Yea I'm really wishing for some kind of intelligent zoom or intelligent decision to reformat or not.

Fonseca · Jul 2, 2010

I like the text wrapping feature. Not everyone finds it bad. I prefer it tbh.

DroidGnome · Jul 2, 2010

pingpongboss said:
I wish it was that easy! The problem with that is, sometimes you WANT double-tap to auto-fit the layout for you. For example when you're reading a long article, and you'd like to zoom in a bit. When you uncheck 'auto-fit pages', you end up with half the text outside of the screen area.

However, you don't want to auto-fit ALL the time. Especially in the scenario that I use in the 20 second short video.

The stock Android browser: Auto-fits when you double tap, but doesn't auto-fit when you pinch-to-zoom. I'd like to see that on the Evo.

I have a suggestion.. the Dolphin browser people are adding new addons all the time.. perhaps they can create one where you can use one of their "Gestures" to Enable/Disable the Auto-fit.. it's a bit more steps than a simple double tap but it should be rather easy for them to code in since they already have the setting.

You'd then click the little gesture area in the bottom left... make a gesture (you can set up beforehand), and it would toggle autofit..

Thoughts?

Braaainz · Jul 3, 2010

I notice a lot of people posting here don't understand what the OP was talking about.

It's not about turning OFF autofit... it's about having one gesture (like double-tapping) do unformatted (autofit off) zoom and a pinch out gesture to do formatted (autofit on) zoom.

i.e. have MORE options like the browser SHOULD have if it hadn't been handicapped by HTC.

freeza · Jul 3, 2010

So, your solution to an insignificant browser "issue" (which i happen to enjoy quite a lot.) is to root, nand unlock, and flash a custom froyo rom where the cameras, 4G, and quite possibly a lot of other things are broken? LOL!

I hated on Windows Mobile phones where i would have to pan and move the page around a million times to read posts after zooming in. it was highly annoying and this phone solves it completely.

While I do agree having the option would be neat, I hardly see the point in flashing a whole new froyo ROM that breaks shit on my phone.

pingpongboss · Jul 3, 2010

freeza said:
So, your solution to an insignificant browser "issue" (which i happen to enjoy quite a lot.) is to root, nand unlock, and flash a custom froyo rom where the cameras, 4G, and quite possibly a lot of other things are broken? LOL!

I hated on Windows Mobile phones where i would have to pan and move the page around a million times to read posts after zooming in. it was highly annoying and this phone solves it completely.

You're completely right, its not a solution at all. It's just a temporary workaround until someone figures out how to get double click to format, and pinch zoom to not format. At least, that's the behavior that I want, which is the same behavior in stock Android 2.1 and 2.2.

NielsJ · Aug 18, 2010

I really like my Desire, but really hate the pinch zoom in the browser.

What bugs me is that everything is ok during the pinch operation, it's when I remove my fingers that the view is re-positioned - more often than not to a completely different area of the screen.

What is the reasoning behind changing the view when I let go?

This is a real problem for large pages with big(ger) fixed-size regions. I have examples where there is not a single pixel overlap between the region shown before and after I let go after pinching.

(FWIW, I have never used any other android browser, iPhone or other "smart phone" for that matter, I find this annoying without any prior exposure to a touch-screen device).

I'll try the Dolphin thingy and see if it helps, though I agree with the OP that this is a bug, not a feature.

pingpongboss · Aug 18, 2010

NielsJ said:
I really like my Desire, but really hate the pinch zoom in the browser.

What bugs me is that everything is ok during the pinch operation, it's when I remove my fingers that the view is re-positioned - more often than not to a completely different area of the screen.

What is the reasoning behind changing the view when I let go?

This is a real problem for large pages with big(ger) fixed-size regions. I have examples where there is not a single pixel overlap between the region shown before and after I let go after pinching.

(FWIW, I have never used any other android browser, iPhone or other "smart phone" for that matter, I find this annoying without any prior exposure to a touch-screen device).

I'll try the Dolphin thingy and see if it helps, though I agree with the OP that this is a bug, not a feature.

Whao, this thread is old! But the problem is still there. FYI, it seems that Dolphin uses the browser as its underlying rendering engine, so it has the same behavior as the regular browser

I've since sold my Evo, and bought a Samsung Captivate. The Captivate has "stock" pinch-to-zoom behavior, which is to say it doesn't reflow the text on pinch-to-zoom, and instead reflows upon double-tap.

Slick1020 · Aug 18, 2010

SebastianX said:
Mine doesn't lag at all when I pinch, matter of a fact it re-structures the page before I can even blink. I know some of you love to bitch about little un-important things, but look I have a fix for you, you'll love this one:

Go back return your Evo and stick with your Droid, stop wasting the site's bandwidth with your pointless rants. If you want a phone to have and do everything the way YOU like it I suggest getting an engineering degree and you can make one yourself.

I'm sorry but this site is full of I don't like this or that wah wah... If you don't like it return it and stop crying.

Damn...LOL. How you like them apples. "engineering degree." Man you are rough!...LOL

jesusislord · Aug 18, 2010

I know im' late to the party but I have been experencing the same problems, before s the update i don't remember having this problem. I love everything about the update but this! i have looked everywhere for a solution but haven't found it and this is the first thread i have seen that really admits there is an issue, can one of you experts give us some ideas (besides rooting everything) i also noticed that in dolphin after making some adjustments it's been okay for me but the stock browser needs some work, i also noticed the stock browser 2.2 zoom worked perfectly on some pages and not on others which is interesting and makes me think it is recompossing based upon the pictures on the page, let me know what you think

Draiko · Aug 18, 2010

It's called text re-flow and it's something I first experienced on the newer Opera Mobile winmo browsers. I love it, but I do think they should allow the user to disable it if desired.

pingpongboss · Sep 3, 2010

A commenter on my Youtube video claims to have found a fix. YouTube - Pinch to Zoom: HTC Sense UI Browser vs Stock Android Browser

I was able to disable this annoying zooming behavior on my HTC Incredible with stock Android 2.2/Sense. Here are the steps I went through: Enable debugging options by typing "about:debug" into browser address bar. Then go to Menu > More > Settings. Scroll down to settings under "debug" heading. You should see the option "Enable GEP zoom", and it will be turned off. Turning it on will give you the Google zooming behavior.

I don't have an Evo anymore to try this with, but maybe someone can confirm that it does fix the reflow behavior.

Jensen · Sep 3, 2010

pingpongboss said:
A commenter on my Youtube video claims to have found a fix. YouTube - Pinch to Zoom: HTC Sense UI Browser vs Stock Android Browser

I don't have an Evo anymore to try this with, but maybe someone can confirm that it does fix the reflow behavior.

It does. Thank god. Double tap reflows now instead of automatic reflow on zoom.

pingpongboss · Sep 3, 2010

Holy crap it works? Niice.

Updated the OP.

xtravbx · Sep 3, 2010

Thanks, makes the browser 100x better

Jensen · Sep 3, 2010

xtravbx said:
Thanks, makes the browser 100x better

Crap, doesn't seem to stick after a reboot. Anyone confirm?

xtravbx · Sep 3, 2010

Bleh... does not stick after a reboot.

pingpongboss · Sep 20, 2010

Update: An XDA dev has made a permanent solution for Desire froyo ROMs. If anyone's interested you can follow his thread to see if it'll work on an Evo. [APP-HACK][SENSE] No text reflow on pinch-to-zoom in browser - xda-developers

Help HTC Sense UI Browser vs Stock Android Browser. Different Pinch-To-Zoom Behavior.

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