Yesterday’s post on iPhone zooming gave me an idea for an interesting zoom feature for Firefox. Since I am no programmer, I thought I would trhow it out there and hope the idea catches on.
The idea is based on a neat iPhone zoom feature. As I noted yesterday, if you double tap on a column on a web page in the iPhone browser, it automatically zooms in to fir the column to the width of the screen.
It would be great to be able to do something similar in Firefox. First, it would be great if Firefox could automatically zoom so that a web page fills the width of the screen. I have a wide-screen monitor and almost all sites have wide empty margins. Second, clicking on a column in a multi-column web site could zoom so the column fits the screen width.
Does anyone know if this is even feasible? Anyone want to implement it?
If you find this post useful or interesting, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below. 
As a (so i say) web developer, those margins are a function of the web page design. Some sites (think wikipedia) have a “fluid” design, meaning the css uses the full page for the data. Other sites, like my own and even like yours, use margins on the outsides for one reason or another (in my case, it is easier and generally works better cross browser. I couldn’t really think of a use for a “zoom” feature in FF. On the iphone, each page is rendered in full (or as much as possible) and the users decide what they want to look at. the iphone is not all that special as a browser, per se, (works generally how safari works on a Comp.), but the iphone’s controls are top notch.
Anyway, Like I said, there is no real use for zoom in firefox, unless ou have one that I can not think of.
I would use the zoom for accessibility purposes. I zoom into every webpage with Firefox’s NoSquint add-on. I have to customize the zoom each time I go to a new page. I nice default would be to zoom in just far enough so that there no margins. So many websites take up a narrow strip down the center of the screen.
The iPhone’s zoom feature is a column based zoom. Since the iPhone screen is so tiny, full pages are illegible, but a column is the right size. On a desktop computer, there may be no need (other than accessibility) for a column-based zoom
Have you ever used the zoom to screen width in Word or Adobe Reader? This is the suggesiton I am making.
I was thinking about this and was looking to see if anyone has done it yet. I’ve been reading webpages on my iPhone a lot lately. I have found myself inadvertently double-clicking on the frame body when the text seems a little small. It kind of makes me feel like a dope, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks it’d be worthwhile.
Maybe I’ll look into programming this add-on. Now, only if I had more “free time”…!
Let me know if you get around to it. I will be your first customer.
I too have thought about this feature and your post reminded me to research it!
This addon almost exactly fits the bill – from my limited testing thus far:
Glazoom
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6489
right click & select zoom on element – its not perfect, but great for zooming say text boxes!
I completely second this. Its a fantastic idea, and as always would be of great use to everyone.
Thanks!
I agree this is very badly needed. It’s the best feature of Safari on the iPhone platform and may be the best feature period.
Who wants to have junk along the gutters while you’re staring at a tiny little collumn of text in the middle of the screen? Especially with the proliferation of netbooks it’s a no-brainer.
(it baffles me that Apple has skipped including this feature in Safari, it’s the only thing that would make me consider leaving Firefox…)
Of course… if Firefox got there first I’d be happy too.
Anyway, I’m amazed and confused that there isn’t talk of wider adoption.
Just googled for this and found your page – I would love this feature in a browser. As I browse on my TV, things can be hard to read. Being able to dynamically zoom in and out would be AMAZING.
Opera has this feature. Firefox needs it. Hitting ctrl-+ on every new page is a nuisance.
Check out the NoSquint plugin for Firefox. There is a beta version on its home page that works with the lates version of Firefox.
The “Glazoom” add-on for Firefox has a “zoom to element” feature. It’s very nice. I also use it for my t.v. browsing.
I will install and test Glazoom today. Thanks for the tip.
I just downloaded and tried Glazoom and it doesn’t work for me. Using “Zoom on element” just sort of zooms the whole page. It doesn’t do the fit-paragraph-to-screen-width that the iphone/ipad does. I would love to see this work, because I have very bad eyesight. I am running Firefox 3.6.20 on Windows 7 x64
Double clicking on web elements to zoom to them has become second nature to me now after several years of iPhone use.
I can’t imagine why anyone WOULDN’T want this feature (at least optionally as a quality add-on).
I find it’s FAR easier to concentrate on reading/understanding something when I can zoom-out everything else so to speak.
Additionally this would be PERFECT for HTPC users as a few have already pointed out. I’ll tell you from personal experience it’s pretty much impossible to properly read a webpage on a 42″ widescreen from six and a half feet away…
It’d be nice to have specific options too.
Like the add-on could automatically zoom the page to fit horizontally once the page finishes loading and then from there you could zoom to the specific elements with a double or triple click.
Oh to dream…
Excellent idea! I’m going to test out Glazoom, but am awaiting a more polished app. I’ve subscribed to comments so please post any developments here : )
I too, googled for this add on and found this. I have been looking for a reason to teach myself how to write these. If anyone wants to work on it with me let me know
Also waiting for a solution similar to iPhone’s Safari column zoom functionality. ::subscribed to followup comments::
While it’s not necessarily the zoom feature, I came across this add-on called “Readability” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/46442
It works better on individual article pages vs homepages.
This will be extremely useful, I have two monitors that I use everyday. In the morning when I’m working, I’ll use the 21″ monitors, with 1280×720 resolution, sitting on a computer chair close to the screen, maybe about 2 foot away from the screen. On the afternoon I’ll switch the monitors to my 40″ tv (1920×1080) to watch movie or net browsing, and seat on the sofa 10 foot away from the screen. (Both monitors are connected to the same computer.
It is always a pain switching zoom-in and zoom-out to make the text readable, on the small screen, 100% zoom is enough for all task, but on the big screen, I will need to zoom-in to 170% to make it readable.