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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

iPad users and mobile sites!

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Earlier yesterday when browsing LPF on my iPad I was very disappointed to suddenly see the screen change back to the mobile site again. I see now it is fixed and has the missing things in place, am sure it will help some people who are using their phones and I know we all appreciate Avery spending $500 to improve LPF. An iPad should never be considered a mobile device and I seldom get a mobile site when browsing. It has a higher screen resolution than my laptop and pictures are sharper and I can even view the oversize pictures without sliding the screen back and forth like I sometimes have to do on my laptop. So why should an iPad be seen by sites as a mobile device? The answer is there are software developers out there who don't know what an iPad is or have never used one! Anyway I decided to spend my day investigating this more and it turns out there is an easy solution.

Most iPad users just use the Safari browser from Apple, why bother with another, if it's not broke don't fix it, well Safari is missing some features other browsers have. The browsers you want are "Google Chrome" and "Opera Mini", go to the App Store now and download both of them, they are of course both free. Safari has no option to change between mobile and desktop, both of these browsers do, and have additional features that are missing from Safari.

In Chrome in the top far right you will see 3 vertical dots, touch that to open a menu, if you are on a mobile site you will see an option that says "Request Desktop Site". This will give you the full site.

Opera mini is designed mainly for those with a slow wireless connection or who can't use too much data, however it has many setting and works as a normal browser too, so it's a good thing to have when traveling and paying for data. It has a data savings feature with multiple settings and even an adjustment for image quality so you don't have to waste using data to D/L high resolution images. The default setting makes it appear to be a mobile agent and will always give you the mobile site if there is one. This is easily changed, touch the red "O" in the upper right to bring up the menu, then select settings, then under advanced you will find "User Agent" there you can change between mobile and desktop, change to desktop and return to settings then return to menu, then at the top of the menu you will have to disable "Data Savings" for it to work, then you will always get the full site.

Hopefully this will help any iPad users here and maybe iPhone users too.

Alan
 





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In Chrome in the top far right you will see 3 vertical dots, touch that to open a menu, if you are on a mobile site you will see an option that says "Request Desktop Site". This will give you the full site.
your work is appreciated. RHD tried to explain to me where this was but I failed at finding it. I can surf LPF once again with the desktop version I prefer. Thanks Alan you always seem to find the answers.

Carl
 
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I use "atomic browser" on both my iDevices and it's the only one I've found which can be customised to my liking. It also has the option to fake a user agent and make the site think I am a desktop browser. I was going to post but I figured most would just be using safari and wouldn't want to change. I must admit atomic is getting very long in the tooth now as the developers have been AWOL since iOS 6 but I still stand by it...
 

c0ldshadow

LPF Founder / Admin
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Hi Alan,

Due to all the awful problems with the previous mobile skin, I'm trying get a refund for it. I installed a new skin which is better over all. I forgot to change the setting back to make iPads not get the mobile layout

Please clear browser cache. now your ipad should use the darkshadows layout
 
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Thanks Avery, yes it's working properly again now when using Safari.

Thanks Carl am glad it helped someone besides me, now we know what we can do when we encounter this elsewhere.

Thanks trencheel303 for telling us about Atomic browser.

Alan
 
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I actually retract my earlier advice for atomic browser and recommend Mercury instead, which I recently started using on the iPad, as the developer of atomic appears to be AWOL and it's now being considered by some as abandoned . Principle reason for using a 3rd party browser is safaris navigation buttons being at the top of the screen on an iPad ( yet at the bottom on an iPhone!) is a monumentally stupid design decision that forces me to not use it.

You can also now request a desktop website natively in safari if your device runs iOS 8. Allow the site to load and then tap the address bar. Scroll the favourites page down and you will see an option "request desktop site".
 
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You can also now request a desktop website natively in safari if your device runs iOS 8. Allow the site to load and then tap the address bar. Scroll the favourites page down and you will see an option "request desktop site".

Thanks trencheel for that info, I just tried it on another site I visit, I hadn't noticed that yet, that's a stupid place to put an option like that where people won't notice it. The software developers for Safari should be fired.

Alan
 
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It is so well hidden that I went back and checked if it's on iOS 7, and it's not. So def an iOS 8 thing but one that could be easily missed.
 
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You can also now request a desktop website natively in safari if your device runs iOS 8. Allow the site to load and then tap the address bar. Scroll the favourites page down and you will see an option "request desktop site".

Thank you for posting this! I loathe the mobile version of websites 99.9% of the time. I'd stopped visiting LPF on my iPhone because the mobile site sucked IMO.
 
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Yep same. Some mobile sites are tolerable but the LPF one is completely naff imo. I feel kinda bad Avery paid for it...
 




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