[SOLVED] Android: meta viewport device-width

dogpatch · 03-27-2015, 03:10 PM

Specifically: why does this tag:

Code:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>

produce a page on my Android which doesn't fit the screen? The user must scroll to the right to see the whole page.

Worse, if I specify a specific page width, as, e.g:

Code:

 <meta name="viewport" content="width=420px"/>

Google will complain (correctly, i suppose) that this will not work well for many mobile devices and so will not index my site for mobile devices.

Am I missing something, or is my Android browser just stupid?

dijetlo · 03-28-2015, 03:56 AM

Quote:

or is my Android browser just stupid?

I didn't think they made IE for android...

The solution is as simple as it is devious. Find a page that renders correctly on your android browser and then steal the html code from the head element...
And of course, claim later it took hours of work and endless combing of the W3C site, but you eventually ciphered it out.

dogpatch · 03-28-2015, 12:22 PM

Well, it took hours of work and endless combing of the W3C site, but I eventually ciphered out that there is nothing at all wrong with

Code:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>

My page requires horizontal scrolling because its contents really don't fit within the android screen. Which is to say, i have some adjustments to make; in this case, to a form and its input fields. Duh!

dogpatch · 03-28-2015, 12:44 PM

By the way, thanks dijetlo. Clicked your post as helpful before seeing that your reputaion is disabled. Anyway, your suggestion put me onto the 'View Source' solution to which I have resorted many times, but in this case, was not seeing the forest for the trees, sortof.

Only - I've never thought of 'View Source' as being devious.