Spending $1,999 on a foldable and then squinting at a crammed web page isn’t something that anyone wants.
Apple’s Safari team said Friday it is exploring a way for websites to use more of the iPhone Duo’s outer display. Right now, a column of Safari controls swallows a chunk of the screen.
Why does Safari feel so cramped on the outer screen?
The answer is simple: Safari controls sit on the right, and web pages can’t draw behind them. Apple moved them there to save vertical space, but it costs width.
That leaves pages about 382 CSS pixels wide in portrait, for anyone well-versed in the units web designers use. Safari tints the leftover strip to match the web page, but that looks like wasted space to me.
You might wonder why Apple doesn’t let pages stretch underneath. Developers can technically do it with a setting called viewport-fit=cover, which makes a page fill the whole screen.
The problem, however, is what WebKit’s Jen Simmons points out: many sites don’t leave safe margins on every edge. As a result, a button or headline could vanish under the controls.
What is Apple asking for, and what can you do today?
Instead of flipping that switch, Apple wants something sturdier and simpler for developers. For now, it is asking for ideas and promising to keep us posted. I appreciate the honesty, but there’s no official date or timeline yet.
Until then, I’d read long pages on the inner screen, where scrolling feels better.
The silver lining, however, is how the browser treats PDFs. Open a PDF in Safari and fold the phone partway (like a paperback), and you’ll see two pages at once. The interface switches back to one when the phone lies flat or closes.
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