Question

I am building a website specifically for mobile devices. There is one page in particular which is best viewed in landscape mode.

Is there a way to detect if the user visiting that page is viewing it in Portrait mode and if so, display a message informing the user that the page is best viewed in landscape mode? If the user is already viewing it in landscape mode then no message will appear.

So basically, I want the site to detect the viewport orientation, if orientation is Portrait, then display an alert message advising the user that this page is best viewed in Landscape mode.

Answer 1

if(window.innerHeight > window.innerWidth){
    alert("Please use Landscape!");
}

jQuery Mobile has an event that handles the change of this property… if you want to warn if someone rotates later – orientationchange

Also, after some googling, check out window.orientation (which is I believe measured in degrees…)

EDIT: On mobile devices, if you open a keyboard then the above may fail, so can use screen.availHeight and screen.availWidth, which gives proper height and width even after the keyboard is opened.

if(screen.availHeight > screen.availWidth){
    alert("Please use Landscape!");
}