BUG: The Message displays badly

Unlike all other versions I've seen, The Message has a rather painful display layout, at least for phones in portrait mode.

In portrait mode, the text only fills a very narrow column, about half of the screen (from left to right).

Measured in "Normal" text mode:

16mm on the left is white space, with the occasional verse-number cluster (eg "14-15")
24mm is then body text (52%)
6mm on the right is pure white space.

It's a bit better in "Small" text but that's quite small for my eyes:

12mm on the left is white space, with the occasional verse-number cluster (eg "14-15")
29mm is then body text (63%)
5mm on the right is pure white space.

Seems to me that if the text can't fill at least N percent of the screen width, the normal layout ought to break for a more useful "narrow device" layout.

Find more posts tagged with

Mobile App

Comments

Dave Hooton

In portrait mode, the text only fills a very narrow column, about half of the screen (from left to right).

The verse numbering format restricts the width of text in both desktop and mobile applications.

With default text size/font, Desktop utilisation is c. 80%, whereas Message utilises 56-60% in Portrait mode on my phone.

If I was to read the Message, landscape mode is more comfortable and it gives an extra 2.5 - 3 lines of text.

Pete Holzmann

Yes, landscape mode is at least ok. I just tried "large" text... I get about one word per line in portrait mode. Pretty ridiculous.

I still would recommend that having a text column only one inch wide on a two inch display is a huge waste of space... [:P]

Kevin Byford (Faithlife)

Unlike all other versions I've seen, The Message has a rather painful display layout, at least for phones in portrait mode.

In portrait mode, the text only fills a very narrow column, about half of the screen (from left to right).

Measured in "Normal" text mode:

16mm on the left is white space, with the occasional verse-number cluster (eg "14-15")

24mm is then body text (52%)

6mm on the right is pure white space.

It's a bit better in "Small" text but that's quite small for my eyes:

12mm on the left is white space, with the occasional verse-number cluster (eg "14-15")

29mm is then body text (63%)

5mm on the right is pure white space.

Seems to me that if the text can't fill at least N percent of the screen width, the normal layout ought to break for a more useful "narrow device" layout.

Hi Pete,

Logos is displaying the resource as it was given to us, and the publisher of the electronic version of The Message decided to have large margins to the left of each column. We didn't create the resource that way and are limited as to the changes we can make concerning the format. It looks the same on other small mobile devices running iOS. I suggest reading in landscape mode with a reasonable text size. Thanks!

Pete Holzmann

Thanks for the response, Kevin!

Sounds like this becomes a question/suggestion with respect to low level resource-formatting capabilities ... I assume that's something that occasionally gets reviewed and improved?