See desktop view on mobile

[AdamKing]

Hi everyone

This may not be an option but I thought I would put it out there anyway. When i view my test responsive site on a mobile for example, the site is automatically resized, as one would expect given the various media queries that control it and so on.

Is there a way, via a custom link/button maybe, to instruct the site to be the full desktop version instead? In other words forcing it to show at full width?

Naturally, this defeats some of the purpose of creating a responsive site in the first place, but I have been asked to consider this feature for our site.

My HTC browser has an option to 'view desktop site' - however this does not work. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks, Adam

[UKCCSam]

This goes against the design method being used to make SellerDeck sites responsive. SellerDeck uses CSS media queries for a lot of the reshaping of page elements, mostly looking at the screen width and adjusting accordingly. You can certainly re-add zooming on mobile devices and adjust the initial scale of the website, in design view.

If you find the following meta viewport tag in your page header:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=0"/>

For a desktop view, this would include setting user-scalable to 1, removing the width parameter and changing the scales as you want. You could also just remove this entire meta tag altogether in order to get the pinch to zoom style back.

You will need to write some JQuery/JavaScript to make this change from a button press, and then create a cookie or additional URL parameter to remember whether the user is looking at "desktop"/"mobile" view.

[AdamKing]

Hi Sam

Many thanks for your reply and suggestions, and yes, i agree, it goes against the point of making a site responsive so that it can be viewed more clearly on small screens, however, if it can be done it might be useful.

I shall play around with the meta tag then and see what happens.

Thanks, Adam

[KarenBM]

Actually I think this is a great thing to bring up. I know I always look for a desktop version when on a larger mobile device. Most sites do it - Amazon for example. Personally I dislike the mobile interfaces and I expected the option to be available as standard. I shall watch this thread with great interest.

[Buzby]

I agree with Karen.

On my iphone I used to have an app that tricked sites into making them think it was a desktop. Great app but can't use on my new iphone