[Tabs] Remove min-width media query

[smeijer]

• This is not a v0.x issue.
• I have searched the issues of this repository and believe that this is not a duplicate.

Expected Behavior 🤔

Tabs should render in a certain style/layout, depending on the width of the Tabs (container), instead of depending on the width of the screen.

Current Behavior 😯

Tabs base their width on the screen, and not on the tabs container.

<div style={{ width: 350, border: '1px solid red' }}>
  <Tabs variant="fullWidth" scrollButtons="auto">
    <Tab label="Tab 1" />
    <Tab label="Tab 2" />
    <Tab label="Tab 3" />
    <Tab label="Tab 4" />
  </Tabs>
</div>

Steps to Reproduce 🕹

Link present: https://x87uz.codesandbox.io/
Link editor: https://codesandbox.io/embed/materialuitabs-x87uz

1. Open the preview screen
2. Notice that only TAB 1 and TAB 2 are visible
3. Open devtools, responsive mode
4. Scale screen to 350 px
5. Notice that TAB 1, TAB 2, TAB 3 and TAB 4 are visible.

The tab container is in both cases, 350 px wide.

Context 🔦

Tabs should render the same based on the width of the tab container. Material is often used and optimized for mobile layouts. This case confirms it.

What I'm doing, is rendering multi-column layout on desktop, and on mobile this translates to multiple single-column screens. So on desktop you would see column 1 + 2, while on mobile you see 1 or 2.

Thereby, my tabs are rendered in a single column, and on desktop optimized for a fixed width. While they scale to fullWidth on mobile.

Your Environment 🌎

Tech	Version
Material-UI	v3.9.3
React	v16.8.2
Browser	Chrome 74

[oliviertassinari]

@smeijer The title of the issue sounds reverse. We are using media queries right now, and you want to rely on JavaScript layout width computation to switch between the different breakpoints, right?

[smeijer]

@oliviertassinari, correct. I've updated the title. I think it should be more clear now.

The problem of the media query is that it's based on the window size instead of the container size. I think this can give problems on other components as well, but it's the Tab's that caused me problems.

Basically what I'm saying is, that I'm not sure if a component (Tabs in this case), should be basing it's display properties on the window size. It should make more sense if it's basing its properties on the element size.

There are workarounds for this if we would want to stick to css media queries, for example with css-element-queries, but I'm not sure if that's the way to go and if it plays nicely with css-in-js.

[oliviertassinari]

@smeijer Your issue comes from the media query we have. I believe it's something we will adress in #15324, in 6 months from now. We should be able to remove the media query, following the specification.

For now, you can override the min-width CSS value.

[chrisVillanueva]

@oliviertassinari

A quick follow up. Should we continue to follow your most recent recommendation to resolve this issue?

you can override the min-width CSS value.

Or has the issue been resolved in the latest next branch build?

Thanks!

[oliviertassinari]

@chrisVillanueva material.io mentions 90px as the min-width and 360px as the max-width. Its what Vuetify implements. It's not what Google and most of the design community tend to do (no min-width) but it seems to be already a great improvement (a smaller value, and no more media query). I think that we could solve this issue like this.