Mobile Browser Woes


Via XKCD

Funny enough I started my new job today and without knowing what kind of hardware I would be assigned or what the new corporate firewall would allow me to do, I’ve had to rely pretty heavily on Mobile Safari. Even though it’s pretty damn powerful and the screen size of the iPad is big enough to display most websites properly, I am finding that many websites simply are not coded to handle desktop, mobile phones AND tablets. The iPhone versions are awfully narrow and quite often don’t have a option to force the original desktop layout. Even worse is when the page looks for flash compatibility and then just blocks you from loading the page even though the only portion of the page using flash is either adds or the early 2000’s splash pages.

I don’t even want to start on pages that rely on double-click or right-click as part of the UI and make no provisions for tap interface and double tap zoom rather than double click.