Breakpoints are Dead

There’s nothing that says our breakpoints, whether in our designs or in our CSS, need to be pixel-based. Marc and Stephanie’s essays reinforced something I’ve been thinking for some time: that while px-based breakpoints quickly obsolete themselves, they’re not our only option. As I mentioned on Twitter, em-based breakpoints have the benefit of being tied to our content, and might present a more future-proof alternative.

Snapshot of 500 Android screen sizes on EU site...

...The first culprits are embedded web views—browser views embedded within apps such as Twitter or Facebook, enabling users to consume links and content without ever leaving the app itself. These views often incorporate their own chrome which results in slightly smaller (or at the very least different) dimensions than the native browser...

...But this is only the half of it. On Android specifically, a series of personalisation and accessibility settings further contribute to screen size diversity. The most disruptive setting by far is Zoom Level.