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So there I was, setting all popups to contain a minimal width and height to keep users from resizing the popup and thus scrambling the whole layout. Most of our popups contain forms which are reached by clicking a button within the website.

But when I was changing the properties, my mind started bugging me with doubt. What if a user resizes the popup to read the text underneath? I know he or she is able to move the window. But they might be used to scaling.

Are there any best practices? Right now I am considering of not giving them the choice to resize, but is it the wise one?

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  • If you develop a layout that works for "all possible" ratios after scaling then it definitely improves the UX since it will enable the user to expand the window to see the entire content on a BIG message. But if you find that the layout easily collapses upon resizing then it's not a good approach since it will make your application look buggy and give a bad impression.
    – AndroidHustle
    Jul 19, 2012 at 15:01

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I'm currently working on a system which has a fullscreen map and uses dialogue windows floating above this to house content and forms.

When designing the system I had always planned to allow resizing and had started my mockups working this way, however, after some thought I removed this.

In my case I was having to make very specific layouts for each popup. The content has next to no repetition. After designing each one for the best UX I then had to re-work it and make it re-sizable. This was moving fields around and meant that any sort of user familiarity with field positions was lost due to the user's own actions.

I think the question you should ask yourself is; will the system within the window provide better or worse UX if it's resizable?

In my case the answer is worst so each dialogue is given a size which fits the content in most naturally and it stays that way. Users expect the windows to be resizable if they're used to windows OS as that encourages full screen, whereas I found mac users don't expect it as much as they're more used to having tiled windows.

Can you give us a hint towards the type of user this is aimed at? Is it trained staff or public? Also, how small are these popups?

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