Some sites show mobile version, some full.

[xplnusa]

Is this a setting that I can change? The screen is more than large enough to show full sized sites. One site for example is www.explorerforum.com , now the really odd part is that it shows full screen on my iPhone, but the mobile version on the iPad!

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Gib]

Is this a setting that I can change?

There's little you can do. Long story short, site developers "ask" what browser (Safari, Firefox, etc.) and/or system (Mac, PC, iOS, etc.) you are using, and send you to whatever version they think is best. If they automatically link you to the mobile version of the site, it is because they think the iPad is an iPhone.

Contact the site. Tell them to update.

 

[studio¹³¹]

or click the link that takes you to the 'full site'.

 

[PCClone]

does ******* look okay?

 

[IrishVixen]

Or try a different browser. I use Atomic, set to mimic Firefox, and it gets around a lot of these issues.

 

[jtara]

Identifying browsers - particularly mobile ones - is an ongoing problem for websites. Many sites simply haven't updated for iPad.

The problem is there is no real standard for identifying browsers, platforms, and browser versions. Each browser has it's own scheme for formatting the User Agent string, and this means that server-side code has to be periodically updated.

There's also the issue of determining just how the user WANTS to site to be presented. There's no standard for this, either.

Some alternate browsers will let you specify the User Agent string, so, for example, you can have it identify itself as a desktop version of Safari.

 

[xplnusa]

does ******* look okay?

I'll have to look!!!!

 

[xplnusa]

Identifying browsers - particularly mobile ones - is an ongoing problem for websites. Many sites simply haven't updated for iPad.

The problem is there is no real standard for identifying browsers, platforms, and browser versions. Each browser has it's own scheme for formatting the User Agent string, and this means that server-side code has to be periodically updated.

There's also the issue of determining just how the user WANTS to site to be presented. There's no standard for this, either.

Some alternate browsers will let you specify the User Agent string, so, for example, you can have it identify itself as a desktop version of Safari.

I thought (assumed) that this was a full version of Safari.

 

[shellbryson]

It is a full version of Safari... sort of (and a bit of an outdated version of Safari at that... iOS4 has a much beefier version of Safari).

It's more to do with the screen size and format than anything. Web site developers (like me) add code to pages so that they reformat themselves for best viewing on various platforms - and until recently this mostly catered for smartphones with limited screensize. Now that we have iPads, many sites need to be updated to avoid detecting and displaying the "mobile" version if and iPad is browsing the site.