The discussion revolves around Discourse’s compatibility with foldable devices like the Microsoft Surface Duo and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. Users share screenshots demonstrating how Discourse renders on these devices in both mobile and desktop views, highlighting the potential for a “master-detail” layout where categories or topics appear on one screen and the content on the other. While some users, like Falco, see opportunities for optimization, others, such as codinghorror, argue that foldables are not yet mainstream and that current responsiveness is sufficient. The conversation also touches on browser APIs like @media (spanning) and the need for apps to adapt to dual-screen environments. Despite interest in enhancing the experience, most agree that significant development efforts for foldable support should wait until the market share grows, with codinghorror noting that robust support may not arrive until Android 13.
Welcome to the wonderful world of innovation! I feel bad for the early adopters out there who are going to have subpar experiences for a number of years (not necessarily with Discourse, but every other site that doesn’t update to account for the changes).
Well, I don’t think they’re going anywhere. If anything, I think Samsung’s latest offerings have fixed many of the issues that previous foldable devices had.
Regardless, we will have to wait and see what happens. I hope that Discourse will someday be optimized for foldable devices.
We’ll see! But mostly the folding should be transparent to the app, e.g. it’s the same as resizing a window on your computer to be taller or wider, and generally the app is designed to respond in an intelligent way to use the additional space as it appears (or scale down as it disappears).
I’d add that the Nintendo 2DS/3DS is a bit of an anomaly as well. Does anyone feel that the split screen design of that device really made for better games? I honestly don’t think so..
There was a period when we first released the Nintendo DS that people would say there’s no way people can look at two screens at once. I almost feel like, as people get more familiar with Wii U and these touchscreen interfaces, that there is going to come a point where they feel like ‘I can’t do everything I want to do if I don’t have a second screen’.
So if we’re treating it as “you just resized the window and made it bigger” then yes, absolutely! That makes sense. But if we’re treating it as “you have two screens that must be used for related, but different purposes” then.. I gotta say all the history here demonstrates that this approach does not work.
Being able to turn your smartphone into a miniature tablet (and vice versa) for content consumption and reading sessions can be really convenient. Nintendo was looking for a problem that didn’t exist in the first place.
The amount of people buying foldable devices continues to grow every single year. Just this year, there were massive gains. Samsung’s latest offerings have only been out for a couple of days now, yet they’re selling like hotcakes and outperforming Samsung’s “normal” offerings.
I’m fine letting the market see what works! My only objection is the “two totally different screens for different purposes” approach, IMHO, totally does not work. But as a way to “resize” a browser window I think it’s perfectly fine.
.
