I believe this only applies to a small group of people but I would like to put it out there. When viewing observations in iNaturalist with the map, features on the map do not properly scale when using an ultra-wide monitor (This may also affect widescreens but I am not sure), causing them to hover in the center of the screen. It makes the map a bit awkward to use with features at the center blocking users from having a clear view of the map.
If possible, having the screen properly scale with resolution, including widescreen and ultra-wide, would be appreciated. Bringing the info boxes to the periphery of the screen so that people’s view of the map remains unobstructed and easier to get a full image of the area you are looking at. Also scaling of the map itself vertically as with widescreens the map appears as a strip instead of filling out the screen.
If this belongs in a different topic or doesn’t apply here I apologize.
are you talking only about changes in the map view? if so, i think there have been a lot of suggestions for Explore page updates, including more dynamic scaling (i would assume mostly for mobile, but which could apply to large or wide monitors, too). see: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ideas-for-a-revamped-explore-observations-search-page/8439. this kind of limited request might go best within that larger thread.
(it may be worth noting that below the buttons to zoom in/out and to find your current location, there’s a button to view the map in full screen, which might be the actual best solution to view the map on a large or wide screen.)
if you’re talking about making the whole website more dynamic for large or wide monitors, then you probably should make a case for such changes on other pages. small screens are less niche than large / wide screens, and past requests for small-screen-friendly designs haven’t gone very far: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/mobile-friendly-website-responsive/1224.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s the horizontal resolution of the screen that’s the issue, not the aspect ratio of your screen—meaning, a square screen with the same horizontal resolution in pixels would have just as much dead space at right and left, along with of course a lot more space above and below the map, while the map interface would look just fine on an ultra-wide monitor with low resolution.
You can address this to some extent by zooming in with a browser, although of course that makes all the other UI elements bigger, too. So you don’t really get that much of an increase in usable map space, because a lot of it gets eaten up by the now-massive list of observations on the right. Basically, the UI is optimized for small, low-resolution screens. If your screen is large or high-resolution, no matter what its aspect ratio is, the UI is not going to fit well.
A similar problem with UI elements blocking the map and that huge amount of whitespace at the bottom
You’d think that the bottom of the map would be a set distance from the bottom info bar rather than being a constant height
And that the map controls and observation list would follow the edges of the screen
As an aside, maybe there should be a feature request for automatic voting for one’s own feature requests. The fact that one has made a feature request is de facto evidence that one supports their feature request.
