Fit to width

There is one feature about Opera that is really irritating and that's the fit to width option. I have ticked the box in the web page preferences to try and get Opera to fit all the websites to width but it simply doesn't work. If I close a website and reopen it I have to click on fit to width again so that I can view it properly. Is there any way of permanently fitting to width?

Originally posted by mrsyardbroom:

I have ticked the box in the web page preferences to try and get Opera to fit all the websites to width but it simply doesn't work.

That's the right method and it works for me.

Most sites work better without it enabled, which is why its off by default.

Pesala, please amplify what you mean by "it works for me".

Like the thread starter, mrsyardbroom, I think it doesn't work, in every way I can think of.

For example, on this forums' pages - I'm typing this on my Vista 32bit PC which is 4 years old (ie nothing new and fancy) and on a screen with a native resolution of 1680x1050. The zoom is at 100% (ie no changes from the norm). These words appear at most 3mm tall (ie a bit small) and the width if the pages is 253 mm - with a large white gap on each side 78mm wide - so the default zoom level wastes over 60% of the available page width. A "zoom to width" function that put the zoom to about 150% on my display would make life much easier (I've just done it manually) - which I'm sure most folk would expect the "fit to width" function to achieve automatically.

Ok, you say, tick the "fit to width" [Tools,Preferences, Web pages, Fit to width]. It does NOT fit the page width to my screen - and I've NEVER seen it actually increase the zoom to fit any site, with nearly all readable sites leaving the vast gap either side. Yes, I could laboriously zoom EVERY web page to my width manually - but that's what you'd hope "fit to width" would do for you (eg in pdf readers).
To be honest, I've been fighting Opera for ages with this setting ticked, assuming it DID do what you expect - only to find today that it doesn't.
No, much worse than that, it almost destroys about 20% of the websites I explore.
Many of the sites come up about 20mm wide, spread out over 20 vertical screen depths. Eh?
Even worse, some sites (like Maplin UK) actually "breathe" in and out (shink-expand-shrink-expand) in width as you're reading them without scrolling!

OK, so un-tick "fit to width". But then there's 60% wastage, like on this forum.
The current "fit to width" does calculations wrong - and software like pdf readers and even MS Word can do it right!

So I'd like to request this feature of Opera be looked at, as it's not worked on any version of Opera I've used since I started using it about 4 years ago.
Finally, wouldn't it be a lot better to have the "fit to width" setting as a toggle on the zoom bar next to the magnifying glass with the + in it?

Originally posted by Windbags:

Pesala, please amplify what you mean by "it works for me".

It means the option works as it is designed to work. As I said:

Originally posted by Pesala:

Most sites work better without it enabled, which is why its off by default.

Whether it helps or hinders depends on how the site is coded.

Originally posted by Windbags:

Finally, wouldn't it be a lot better to have the "fit to width" setting as a toggle on the zoom bar next to the magnifying glass with the + in it?

Since it only works for some sites, it is seldom needed, but if you want to make it more accessible, drag the link to create a button to toggle fit to width. Fit

I have the button on my address bar, and try it if I come across a site where the layout is broken.

Originally posted by Pesala:

It means the option works as it is designed to work.

No disrespect, but that hardly qualifies as "amplification".
Does it fit this forum's display to your full page width available?
It sure doesn't on mine.

What was it designed to do, if not that?

If not to fit a web display to a user's browser page width, then it need renaming, to avoid confusion.

Originally posted by Windbags:

What was it designed to do, if not that?

To see how how it works, visit a page like Opera Help, restore your browser window, enable fit to width, and resize the window horizontally. Then visit a page like my review page that uses absolute positioning, and resize the window. Then enable fit to width and try again.

Originally posted by Windbags:

... Does it fit this forum's display to your full page width available?
It sure doesn't on mine. What was it designed to do, if not that? If not to fit a web display to a user's browser page width, then it need renaming, to avoid confusion.

I've found fit-to-width most useful in resolving problems with certain webpages that have text/graphics that overlap or blur into one another because of coded positioning issues in various parts of a website's display. It doesn't always fully fix things, but it often does improve readability of problematic text, especially where side-by-side panels on a website are concerned. There may be ambiguity in the "fit-to-width" title of the tool, however. I don't believe it was ever intended to simply fit web pages to the screen-width displayed at whatever zoom level, but is intended as more of a corrective-width tool for position-coding problems of sections of text that run too wide or overlap width-wise on a given site. When a site comes up in Opera with a garbled-looking display, the first thing I try is fit-to-width to see if it makes the display usable. At least, that's how it's always worked for me, going back a long way through Opera versions.

Why is that "fit to width" does not appear to be the problem on Firefox or IE that it is on Opera? Those browsers don't seem to have any difficulty in properly displaying any page that we go to.

I'm not a graphics expert, by any means. But perhaps at least part of the reason is that the Opera graphics engine adheres more strictly to web standards, whereas the other browser engines play the same non-standards games as many of the websites. In which case, sloppy or short-cutted code on websites which don't adhere to standards will display incorrectly in Opera (which non-standard code should do, since the code is "wrong"), but not in other browsers that play the same short-cut games as the site. Another reason may be that many sites code specifically for non-standard engine idiosyncrasies in the "big 3" browsers - and that will cause havoc for a browser (like Opera) that plays by the standards. Finally, many sites sniff for browser brands and some of them may serve obsolete or crude code to a detected browser for which they haven't wanted to spend their scarce development money to satisfy.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Originally posted by Windbags:

What was it designed to do, if not that?

To see how how it works, visit a page like Opera Help, restore your browser window, enable fit to width, and resize the window horizontally. Then visit a page like my review page that uses absolute positioning, and resize the window. Then enable fit to width and try again.

Well, I did that, and if my page width is smaller than the website display (ie I get a scroll-bar at the bottom), it fits the page to my (rather small) width - but doesn't do this by zooming, but by rearranging the text across the page width.

If that is what it is designed to do, wouldn't it be better to call this feature "rearrange text to narrow page view"?
(as it does nothing on a wider page display).
Every other application I use that has a "fit to width" (eg photo viewing apps, pdf viewers, MS Word etc) all change the current ZOOM to fit MY page width, nothing to do with rearranging text & keeping it the same height.

I'd guess most people are expecting what I'm expecting "fit to width" to do - and it would be really useful!

So I suggest the current feature is re-named "rearrange text to narrow page view (keep zoom level)".
I would never have checked it when I was setting up Opera at the start if it had it been so described.

But a feature which does alter zoom to fit a user page (zoom in or out from what it currently displays) would also be really useful!