Or a browser that leaves the font size alone and doesn't try and guess what size the font should be by some invisible algorithm that factors in things like the depth of the text node in the DOM.

You hit some sites, and fonts that should be the same size (and are on the desktop site) are just wildly different sizes.

I'm using Dolphin almost exclusively for this single reason.

Is that what Android Chrome is doing on Hacker News? I remember reading it sometimes and seeing some comments being larger than others. I thought it was some crazy mobile optimization based on votes but it didn't seem to have any logic it to it.

Yes, I that's Android Chrome with its crazy font size guessing :/

Chrome has also more HTML5 related bugs than all other modern browser combined, as JQuery devs mentioned in their blog (2.0 release). It correlates with my own web dev expierence as well. It would be great if Google would employ some QA managers.

Out of interest what does dolphin do? Does it just leave the text as is?

Dolphin just lets the web page describe the font size... thus it's all correct.

Chrome and Firefox both try and guess what the font size should be and ignore the web page telling it. Thus the font varies all over the place, though the pattern seems to be depth of text in DOM.

Just set the font size to a minimum in Firefox preference and it will stop doing this font resizing. To make text bigger change browser.viewport.desktopWidth in about:config to some smaller value.

> > some small print,

> No! [...] then zoom in on the bit you're interested in.

??? Why "No"

    Deskop pages also have a habit of being laid out with very long lines that don't reflow when you zoom in, this is 
    bad in general (narrow columns are more readable) but especially bad on a portrait-orientation device.

Especially now that phones have high-res screens. No need for everything to be dumbed down to a single column that's 8 words wide.

It's not about resolution, it's about angle of view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view).

My phone has the same resolution as my computer monitor and 45" TV. But due to size and viewing distance, the same font & image sizes shouldn't be used on all.

This is why we have ppx/device-pixel-ratio on the web.

No, it's about resolution (or a unit of length, but that boils back down to resolution): http://omnicognate.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/in-css-px-is-not...

Your link appears to agree with me. That ppx/device-pixel-ratio is used to make CSS pixels an angular measurement. Although I haven't encountered a TV browser that does this properly yet.

> dumbed down

???

Longer columns doesn't take higher intelligence, it just strains your eyes.

http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

Have you ever seen a print edition of the NYT or WSJ?

I still use a WinPhone7 phone and many of these "mobile" sites are completely broken on WP7 IE - they frequenetly have images or boxes that extend outside the bounds of the fixed-width area and don't allow me to zoom out or pan right to see the whole thing.

That's because the Windows Phone 7 browser is unfathomably awful. I say this as a one-time WP7 user and a web developer.

I felt guilty for using it because there was an outside chance it might make someone have to develop for it.

They changed the browser in the Mango update that's all I know. Came out with the WP8 update.

The WP8 browser is a lot better. WP7 was (IIRC) IE9-level.

This isn't just your phone. I encounter this specific problem a lot on an iPhone 5 running iOS 6. (And it is just one of the many irritating bugs with mobile sites that I see regularly).

That's your phone's fault, not the website's.

Or maybe the site was using tons of -webkit prefixes in their CSS ? You don't know.

It is a problem with the user-agent if it does not allow the user to zoom, and I don't care what the page markup says. Zooming can be a function of the display and not the page layout. An, um, "content zoom" is a different thing entirely.

Amen. I wish there were a MobileSafari preference to ignore all the terrible viewport business (I am so fucking sick of websites with tiny type disabling my ability to zoom!) and send a desktop safari user-agent on top.

Even Motherfucking Website[1] cocks this one up and disables zooming.

[1] http://motherfuckingwebsite.com

> I am so fucking sick of websites with tiny type disabling my ability to zoom!

Me too! I made a bookmarklet[1] that restores your ability to zoom on sites that explicitly disable it.

[1] https://gist.github.com/jasonbarry/6047338

In Chrome for Android, just tick Settings > Accessibility > Force enable zoom

Disabling the viewport on websites that need zoom is really bad design, but if you have a website that is optimized or at least scales well to mobile sizes then disabling zoom is better. If the user doesn't have a reason to zoom on to content then accidentally zooming makes for a worse experience.

Although I agree that there should be an option to disable the disabling of viewport zooming; I think it makes for a better UX for most mobile website viewers.

> then disabling zoom is better

When the page loads no zooming happens; how about we let me decide whether or not I feel like zooming it or not?

If I accidentally zoom I know how to not-accidentally un-zoom.

All zoom-disabling is user hostile.

So, I think I agree with this but I have a legit question: If this is such the case, why is there almost no zooming functionality in native apps?

One of my favorite iOS Chrome features is "request desktop version"

The need for two fingers to navigate a page annoys me far more than text size.

>I search in vain for a browser whose "view in desktop mode" actually works.

Have you tried Firefox for Android?

Firefox for Android is my primary browser on my Nexus 5 now that the AOSP browser has been removed. On my Nexus 4, I rooted the phone to get back to the AOSP browser, but when KitKat came out, it broke root. I haven't gotten around to re-rooting either phone.

And no, the "view in desktop mode" toggle in Firefox for Android almost never works. I've considered rage-reporting bugs for all the URLs it fails on, but it's an idle fantasy right now. It clearly isn't a priority for Mozilla.

The view in desktop often fails when the site uses a mobile-specific url.

That creates a problem that is hard for the browser to deal with cleanly.

I haven't seen it fail, but I have only used the desktop view when coming from a page that then gets redirected to a mobile page. Firefox handles that well.

You want the "Always Zoom" Add-on in Firefox for Android.