I remember having my iphone 3g months ago and if I pinched to zoom the text would reformat itself in a single column so I wouldn't have to scroll left and right to read the paragraph. The 3gs is not doing this. Is anyone else having this problem? Or just to try it on the 3g and make sure it does work on that phone just in case I'm having a bad memory with this. Thank you.
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Iphone 3Gs removes word wrap in safari?
- Thread starter pamela80
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Yes it does when I double tap. But I'm very sure it worked when I would pinch/zoom as well because after giving up my Iphone 3g months ago and looking for other phones I would test out the browser and see if it did the same thing because I wanted the feature my 3g had. I had thought that 3.0 removed this feature maybe.
I have used iPhone since OS version 2.0.0 on my iPhone 3G purchased on release-day in July 2008, and I can tell you that Safari on my phone has never, ever, ever done this, and I've never seen any other iPhone or iPod Touch on the planet across all generations and versions of the OS that do this, either. I've got an iPod Touch that I've used all three generations of OS on (1.x, 2.x, 3.x), and it has never done what you describe, nor have any of my other friends' iPhones or iPod Touches (and I've had many pass through my hands).
Mobile Safari will try to render the page as faithfully as it can, assuming a static screen size. Unlike the browser on your computer, which will, in certain circumstances (depending on whether the HTML/CSS is coded on that page or part of the page for relative screen sizes or for static widths defined in pixels), reflow the text if you resize the browser window, Safari on iPhone picks a certain screen size (width) to emulate and sticks with it. As you zoom in and out (however you do it...pinch-zoom or double-tap, it doesn't matter), or even rotate the screen, the specific "width" of a given element doesn't seem to change and the text never "reflows" to fit a different element size. The effect is more akin to a newspaper article that you take a magnifying glass to. You are simply zooming in and out, not changing the amount of space that the text has to live within. (This is why the double-tap gesture is so powerful, and why it exists alongside pinch-to-zoom: it automatically zooms in just enough to make the text element you are looking at fit the exact width of the screen, so that you don't have to scroll side-to-side to see all of it.)
So, I really don't know what to tell you. I don't want to say you were imagining things, but...maybe you were imagining things?
In any case, even if you weren't, there's no way that this would be a 3G vs. 3GS thing. Mobile Safari is the same code on both phones. This would have to be a software issue. If something changed, it would be between OS/firmware versions, not between devices.
-- Nathan
Mobile Safari will try to render the page as faithfully as it can, assuming a static screen size. Unlike the browser on your computer, which will, in certain circumstances (depending on whether the HTML/CSS is coded on that page or part of the page for relative screen sizes or for static widths defined in pixels), reflow the text if you resize the browser window, Safari on iPhone picks a certain screen size (width) to emulate and sticks with it. As you zoom in and out (however you do it...pinch-zoom or double-tap, it doesn't matter), or even rotate the screen, the specific "width" of a given element doesn't seem to change and the text never "reflows" to fit a different element size. The effect is more akin to a newspaper article that you take a magnifying glass to. You are simply zooming in and out, not changing the amount of space that the text has to live within. (This is why the double-tap gesture is so powerful, and why it exists alongside pinch-to-zoom: it automatically zooms in just enough to make the text element you are looking at fit the exact width of the screen, so that you don't have to scroll side-to-side to see all of it.)
So, I really don't know what to tell you. I don't want to say you were imagining things, but...maybe you were imagining things?
In any case, even if you weren't, there's no way that this would be a 3G vs. 3GS thing. Mobile Safari is the same code on both phones. This would have to be a software issue. If something changed, it would be between OS/firmware versions, not between devices.
-- Nathan
So the android phones do this when you zoom in and out. Do any 3rd party browsers for ios do this?
I find this to be very useful. For instance, if you have a 960 pixel wide text column, if you zoom in all the way, the iphone will make everything fit perfectly. But if you zoom in b/c the text is too small, on android it would reflow everything (word wrap) so that it's readable. With the iphone you can zoom in, but you're now scrolling left and right b/c it's not a single column.
I find this to be very useful. For instance, if you have a 960 pixel wide text column, if you zoom in all the way, the iphone will make everything fit perfectly. But if you zoom in b/c the text is too small, on android it would reflow everything (word wrap) so that it's readable. With the iphone you can zoom in, but you're now scrolling left and right b/c it's not a single column.
Agreed, text reflow should be done by every mobile browser. For one thing, it's normally the proper HTML behavior.
That said, try the Atomic Browser. It supposedly has some text reflow options.
That said, try the Atomic Browser. It supposedly has some text reflow options.