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"viewport" <meta> tag . . . | . . .



Content Warning: mention of sensory issue related to loud noise, brief mention of unease about parent(s) finding out one's interests

When I first went into the neocities editor, with its default neocities page, I looked at the head and realised that it had something my code didn't: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">.

I quickly realised that if this is something on the default neocities, I should definitely be implementing it. Truth be told, when coding this site, I'm mostly relying on what I can remember from the first time I got really into learning how to make websites. And I was never a master at it in the first place! So mostly relying on my memory is not the best...

I've started to implement the viewport meta tag in test files (which are offline; thus no changes appearing on this website)(also, good news, it fixed an issue I'd been having where everything got small if there wasn't enough text), and while that's fun it also makes me kinda? Nervous? Like I feel like this is somehow gonna make my website waayyy less compatible with various devices than it was before.

Well, scratch the "somehow", I know exactly how I think it's gonna do that: By making text and various elements appear at wildly different sizes depending on the device.

I don't know! I'm having to put the font sizes and margins at drastically lower numbers than I usually would, or would expect the numbers to be!

And it reminds me of when I would use my phone's built-in html reader to view my downloaded ao3 stories, and everything was wayy smaller than it was displayed as on a regular browser. So then I edited those files to suit me on the html reader, which meant making everything large in the code just so it could display at reasonable sizes.

But I wanted to use some read-aloud extensions which I could only use on firefox (since I couldn't use extensions on the html reader or chrome (also ew chrome)), so I finally bit the bullet and downloaded file manager+ to be able to view those files on firefox (which was also such a great idea 'cus file manager+ is better than my default file manager <3 So much comfier <3), and then when I finally opened it with firefox it was so blown up! Everything was so large! It turned out the default values from when you download those files were literally fine and it was just the html reader making everything ridiculously small!!!

I mean I edited the html files anyway to suit my taste but the point is that the default file was legible, which it certainly was not in my built-in html reader.

Hrrg,,, I'm just nervous that adding the viewport is making this site display in ways I don't want it to more often than it is already. I don't have a laptop so I can't check myself, but when I flip the browser to "desktop" mode it's already doing things I don't want it to.

I guess it doesn't look bad, though. Just different. Shame I don't have a laptop though (..? Maybe? No one's asked for my school chromebook back yet so I might just steal it. Guy I talked to at graduation said they were planning to do the same thing lol), because I can't get the full picture on desktop mode. It's probably fine? Everything's probably legible? So I guess it doesn't matter if it displays the exact way I want it to. As long as people can read it.

Woof. I'm gonna implement media queries later, but for now this will suffice.

Besides, the viewport meta tag sounds important. So I'm sure that if anything it's making my site more consistent.

Ech, you know, I could actually do those freeCodeCamp courses to get better at this stuff. Back when I first started learning, I followed along to some of the videos. I think it was only ever one or two, though. I think they'd be really useful, and fun to do!

I haven't done any in a while 'cus I thought I was unable to do any coding whatsoever on mobile. Thought it didn't have the processing power for it (<— Guy who doesn't know what processing power is). But then I found out I could! Which was really good for me 'cus I felt bummed I wouldn't be able to do that again until I got another computer! So good thing I can actually do that!

But then I didn't really have headphones. And I would feel embarrassed to watch that out loud. But instead of facing that and learning to break through embarrassment and nervousness I don't have to deal with that! (<— To be fair I don't really want to make unneccesary noise that can't be avoided. It was loud enough already. It was stressful and would sometimes hurt my ears. Don't want to contribute to that environment. What if my siblings feel the same? I'm sure my mum does. Plus the idea of my parent knowing my interests makes me unneasy) Because guess who has headphones now! This guy!

I'll prolly do that, then. If I can bypass the Rules in my head about under what conditions I'm allowed to watch that.

Well, anyway, that's all for now. Have a wonderful day!

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