Wrapping Code Samples on Mobile Devices

By  on  

One part of being a technical blogger that I've had to come to grips with is code samples and small mobile device screens.  I was amazed when I saw a double-digit percentage of visits to this blog were from mobile phones -- mental!  I started paying more attention to detail on said devices and I realized that code samples required loads of horizontal scrolling:  yuck.  By utilizing CSS white-space, we can make code wrap and avoid arm-numbing scrolling on small screens:

pre {
	white-space: pre-line;
}

I like using PrismJS so that requires a different selector:

pre[class*='language-'], code[class*='language-'] {
	white-space: pre-line;
}

Thankfully white-space lets me help you all avoid horizontal scrolling on mobiles. Of course you'll need to choose which media query you want to apply that to, but I'll let you do that.  In some cases it may be difficult to read the line-broken code, but that's surely better than all that crazy scrolling.

Recent Features

  • By
    Write Better JavaScript with Promises

    You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    AJAX Page Loads Using MooTools Fx.Explode

    Note: All credit for Fx.Explode goes to Jan Kassens. One of the awesome pieces of code in MooTools Core Developer Jan Kassens' sandbox is his Fx.Explode functionality. When you click on any of the designated Fx.Explode elements, the elements "explode" off of the...

  • By
    CSS Sprites

    The idea of CSS sprites is pretty genius. For those of you who don't know the idea of a sprite, a sprite is basically multiple graphics compiled into one image. The advantages of using sprites are: Fewer images for the browser to download, which means...

Discussion

  1. I’m also using PrismJS. Any tips to get the line-numbers to adjust?

  2. Also, by default tab size is about 4 i believe, this snippet brings it back a little…

    // @media query here for small screens...
    pre{
          webkit-tab-size: 2;
          -moz-tab-size: 2;
          -ms-tab-size: 2;
          -o-tab-size: 2;
          tab-size: 2;
    }
    

    That is, assuming you’ve got tabs over spaces (which you should of course).

  3. Interesting post. I have thought about this for quite some time. The thing is that code is much more readable, in my opinion, when not wrapping it like this.

    Since we are used to large screens, reading wrapped code like this is hard and unfamiliar. We do not code on small screens and therefor it makes more sense to scroll horizontally when viewing code then to force line breaking/wrapping.

  4. No offense, but I would rather go with all the crazy scrolling. I honestly think it looks nicer than the broken up code, and it is easier to read and understand code samples.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!