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Safari on iPadOS Optimized to Work With at Least Some Desktop Versions of Websites
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Can anybody explain why, from a technical perspective, safari on the iPad hasnt been a desktop class browser?
Lol, your reaction is off the rails if anything. Safari's user agent can be used by a web server to choose variants based on the known capabilities of a particular version of client software - in this case macOS versus iOS. So the user agent string causes a different retrieval of the site, which gets rendered differently because it's desktop but now with touch interactions. Thanks, Apple.
Go and cool down.
Safari on iOS devices has been desktop class (excluding PlugIns) from the start. The golden era for iOS web browsing for me was the first nine months to a year after the original iPhone was released. Websites were always rendered as the Desktop version web during that period but then designers changed their sites to recognise the iPhone as a mobile device and ‘forced’ the mobile version of the site for iOS devices as a default.
If I need to use a desktop site on my iOS devices I currently use the iCab Mobile browser which has user agent spoofing options.
You can feel free to go look at my post history to see if I have a history of either complaining about the quality of articles, or “going off the rails.”
This article is particularly bad.
Your description of the user agent string causing different retrieval is correct. The authors description of the user agent “rendering interaction” shows a complete lack of knowledge, or even basic one minute Google research into what an user agent is.
It is a little of both. They now return a user agent saying they are macOS rather than mobile or iOS, and they’ve updated how the iPad responds to many events to help with conflicts between touch based and mouse based interfaces. There is a pretty good video on it from WWDC. It is less than an hour long and even non-technical people can get some idea of what is going on from it. They do a little bit of examples showing JavaScript and CSS, but most of it is detailing the behavior differences.
Came here to say this! Frustrating when this is shown as a new future when it was in ios1...
All browsers advertise a 'User Agent' when visiting a website. It tells the server what kind of browser it is, what OS you're running, the versions, etc. Traditionally, websites would have a desktop version and a mobile version and they'd use this User Agent string to determine which one to serve up. Lots of those websites lump all smartphones and tablets in the same category and serve the mobile version to all. What Apple is doing is changing that User Agent string so those types of websites will, hopefully, instead serve up the desktop version. They're also doing other things so those desktop versions work better on a touch interface but that's the gist of it.
It's not so much that Apple is fixing a defect in their browser. It's more that Apple is working around a problem created by companies and website developers that don't develop their sites to work properly on tablets and instead still treat them like phones with small screens.
This will probably only affect websites that still rely on a User Agent, which a surprising number still do. The modern way of doing this is to ignore that string and instead adopt responsive web design practices where you don't have a "desktop website" and a "mobile website". You have a single website that's designed to work well with any sized screen. You start on the smallest screen you want to support and make your site work 100% correctly on it. You then make the screen bigger until your site breaks and fix it to work at this resolution. Keep doing this until it works at all resolutions. This change that Apple is making most likely won't have much of an affect on those sites as they should already work well on an iPad (assuming the web developers weren't idiots which is entirely possible).
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In 2007, "Desktop class browsing" meant "this isn't a barely-functional list of links you'll read on your monochrome LCD display", but that it would go grab the "actual" webpage, as much as it could at the time. I suppose the thing you're maybe glossing over is that the "desktop class browser" in 2007 that was released was the impetus for the explosion of mobile-class browsers that have made the mobile version of the web usable and possible. For something with a larger display, for years, using a mobile or mobile-ish interface was fine. We are more coming full circle than anything, in bringing a full/real desktop browser to the iPad.
Although this is great, the problem isn't the iPad. The problem is people locking themselves to Safari.
I use Firefox and the PC mode works as expected.
I use Firefox and the PC mode works as expected.
An iPad Pro can cost over $1700 spending on how it is configured. I think it would be nice to get a Thunderbolt 3 enabled port on it for faster data transfer between iPad and laptop or desktop computer. I think the new updates/upgrades are good but still a bit off for what one pays for a device. A well configured one at $1700 is a bit more compared to an X1 Carbon Thinkpad which is quite capable. For an expensive tablet it needs to be quite capable and Apple has the money technology to have great products manufactured.
Awesome! I was about to ask if wix works!!!
I have been frustrated with my Apple devices when using wix: iPhone wix app always has important functions missing; MacBook too heavy when I am out; iPad safari not working.
I so look forward to use my iPad to edit wix but wonder my 4-year-old iPad Air 2 is capable to do that...
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I tried to use iCab mobile on my iPad before to edit my wix blog posts but too many glitches so I gave up on using it
It's embarrassing that I needed to ask this, considering I do some (front end)w development on the side. But thank you for this explanation I totally understand this now.
Yes this was the biggest selling point of iPhones for me. Since then, product managers, designers, web developers and front end software engineers have screwed it up and crawled us back to the baby web again.
You're reading it wrong. It was not promised back then:
- Desktop-class email
- Web browsing
- Searching
- Maps
It was desktop class browsing, minus flash (yay). I loved that entire web pages would render like on my desktop. I could double tap a frame to zoom in, it was great....
Then web developers decided they needed to make a “special” website for mobile devices, which screwed everything up. I wish Apple would make the user agent editable on all iOS devices, or default them all to MacOS.
Beyond that, the new hover enhancement is nice.
Then web developers decided they needed to make a “special” website for mobile devices, which screwed everything up. I wish Apple would make the user agent editable on all iOS devices, or default them all to MacOS.
Beyond that, the new hover enhancement is nice.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/203/
You can also download the WWDC App and see descriptions and watch any of the videos for free.
Yes, Safari will allow for per site preferences. I would assume they sync, but I don't recall seeing that specifically, but some of these settings are more iPad specific.
While iPadOS Safari does default to the desktop useragent, you can tell it to use mobile instead, and it is supposed to remember if you want reader mode for that site, and possibly font changes you set.
I travel over 100K a year and I am carrying two similarly-sized displays and two batteries; the ones in my 13" MacBook Pro and the others in my 11" iPad Pro. What I would *really* like to see is a keyboard module that when snapped onto an iPad changes it to a MacBook.
That is, the iPad works like an iPad when undocked, but when docked, it becomes the display for a MacBook and optionally can add to the laptop's battery capacity or give it some additional processing power.
That is, the iPad works like an iPad when undocked, but when docked, it becomes the display for a MacBook and optionally can add to the laptop's battery capacity or give it some additional processing power.
I was so happy with this release and fell in love with Craig Federihgi, then I saw his interview where he basically called primitive to anyone requesting these features. Apple's arrogance is its doom, at least they gave us what we were asking for so long, but still ******s.