Javascript max viewport height after orientation change Android & iOS

androidhtmliosjavascriptmobile

The Goal:

To find the max viewport height of a device including the space of the address bar so that we can dynamically resize the min-body and push our content up.

The Problem:

Mobile browsers handle orientation states differently and update DOM properties on orientation change differently.

Detect rotation of Android phone in the browser with JavaScript

With Android phones, screen.width or screen.height also updates as the device is rotated.

|==============================================================================|
|     Device     | Events Fired      | orientation | innerWidth | screen.width |
|==============================================================================|
| iPad 2         | resize            | 0           | 1024       | 768          |
| (to landscape) | orientationchange | 90          | 1024       | 768          |
|----------------+-------------------+-------------+------------+--------------|
| iPad 2         | resize            | 90          | 768        | 768          |
| (to portrait)  | orientationchange | 0           | 768        | 768          |
|----------------+-------------------+-------------+------------+--------------|
| iPhone 4       | resize            | 0           | 480        | 320          |
| (to landscape) | orientationchange | 90          | 480        | 320          |
|----------------+-------------------+-------------+------------+--------------|
| iPhone 4       | resize            | 90          | 320        | 320          |
| (to portrait)  | orientationchange | 0           | 320        | 320          |
|----------------+-------------------+-------------+------------+--------------|
| Droid phone    | orientationchange | 90          | 320        | 320          |
| (to landscape) | resize            | 90          | 569        | 569          |
|----------------+-------------------+-------------+------------+--------------|
| Droid phone    | orientationchange | 0           | 569        | 569          |
| (to portrait)  | resize            | 0           | 320        | 320          |

Because of this it is clear that to find the max viewport height no matter what orientation, using a single function to return the max height of a device will never be constant over a range of devices.

Other problems I have discovered that don't make these two play nice:

  • The window.devicePixelRatio property can return inconsistent heights
    when dividing by window.outerHeight.
  • Delay window.setTimeout(function() {}, time) needs to be used to give DOM elements a chance to update after orientation change.
  • window.outerHeight is not updated on orientation changes for iOS devices. Using screen.availHeight as a fallback includes the bottom nav bar as total height.
  • Using a #header, #content, #footer structure forces you to dynamically recalculate the #content{min-height} to push the #footer down when the body is dyamically updated.

A Solution:

First let's take a look at DIV structure:

<style>
#header,#content,#footer{width:100%;}
</style>

<body>
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="content"></div>
<div id="footer"></div>
</body>

We want to prevent devices from scaling on their own:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />

We need help to have the ability to return a max viewport height and hide address bar for iOS:

<script src="iOS.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

http://iosjs.com/

Then detect if the device supports orientation change and use resize as a fallback:

var iOS = (navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPad|iPhone|iPod)/i) ? true : false);
var android = (navigator.userAgent.match(/Android/i) ? true : false);
var supportsOrientationChange = "onorientationchange" in window;
var orientationEvent = supportsOrientationChange ? "orientationchange" : "resize"; 

The belly of the beast:

function updateOrientation()
{
    var orientation = (window.orientation);

    if(android)
    {
        window.setTimeout(function() {
            window.scrollTo(0,0);
            var size = window.outerHeight/window.devicePixelRatio;
            $('body').css('min-height', size + 'px');
            var headerHeight = $('#header').height();
            var footerHeight = $('#footer').height();
            var contentHeight = size - (headerHeight+footerHeight);
            $('#content').css('min-height', contentHeight + 'px');
            window.scrollTo(0,1);
        }, 200);
    }

    if(iOS)
    {
        window.setTimeout(function(){
            window.scrollTo(0,0);
            var size = iOS_getViewportSize();
            var headerHeight = $('#header').height();
            var footerHeight = $('#footer').height();
            var contentHeight = size.height - (headerHeight+footerHeight);
            $('#content').css('min-height', contentHeight + 'px');
            window.scrollTo(0,1);
        }, 0);
    }
}

Add event listeners for page load and orientation event:

if(iOS)
{
    iOS_addEventListener(window, "load", iOS_handleWindowLoad);
    iOS_addEventListener(window, "orientationchange", iOS_handleOrientationChange);
    iOS_addEventListener(window, "resize", iOS_handleReize);
}
addEventListener("load", function() 
{
    updateOrientation();
}, false);
addEventListener(orientationEvent, function() {
    updateOrientation();
}, false);

Proof is in the pudding:

iPhone 4 & 4s Portrait & Landscape

iPhone 4 & 4s Portrait
iPhone 4 & 4s Landscape


Android Portrait & Landscape

Android Portrait
Android Landscape


The goal here is to minify this solution or make it better.

Best Answer

This is a simple solution that will append the browsers width and height to the document body on load and window resize.

jQuery.event.add(window, "load", resize);
jQuery.event.add(window, "resize", resize);

  function resize() 
    {
      var h = jQuery(window).height();
      var w = jQuery(window).width();
      jQuery("body").css({"width": w, "height": h});
    }