814875 - Add a "Request desktop site by default" option to Fennec

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 790954

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[s.j.shepp44]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Tablet; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0
Build ID: 20121116114411

Steps to reproduce:

visited website wanting desktop site


Actual results:

automatically went to mobile site


Expected results:

Setting to automatically request desktop site.

Comment 1

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Can you provide more specific steps to reproduce? Like what URL you visited, whether or not you selected the "Request desktop site" menu item, and what order you did these things in? As is you provide no information that lets us reproduce the problem.

Comment 2

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

No one particular website - it's any that has a mobile version, but for the sake of argument take http://www.techmeme.com/ which exhibits particularly annoying behaviour.

STR: http://www.techmeme.com/ on Firefox on a tablet, or frankly anything with a decent screen

Results: looks rubbish

Expected results: looks as good as the desktop version

(Techmeme is particularly bad because it first loads the full desktop version before redirecting you to the mobile site, but don't get sidetracked by that)

The essential problem is that a 10' tablet screen has a lot more in common with an 11' laptop screen than the 4' phone screen for which most mobile sites were designed. I'm not sure that I ever want a mobile site on a decent sized tablet, but I certainly like the option to default to the desktop version.

Comment 3

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

This is more an evangelism issue with any given website if they are not sending desktop to tablet. The tablet token is in the user-agent. If this is in relation to 'request desktop site', see bug 810690 comment #3

Comment 4

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #3)
> This is more an evangelism issue with any given website if they are not
> sending desktop to tablet. The tablet token is in the user-agent. If this is
> in relation to 'request desktop site', see bug 810690 comment #3

This isn't an evangelism issue, and the comment linked isn't an answer I'm afraid.

Comment 5

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

This is most definitely an evangelism issue. Techmeme is sending us mobile content despite the tablet UA string.

Comment 6

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

This may be an evangelism issue but we need to acknowledge that certain companies may make a product decision to send tablets their mobile site. Can you confirm that alternative tablet browsers receive desktop content for Techmeme?

Comment 7

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

This is not an evangelism issue.

We have a button in Firefox for Android that says "Request Desktop Site". That is in recognition of the fact that sometimes sites send us the mobile version when that isn't appropriate.

Firefox on a 10' tablet has far more in common with an 11' laptop than it does with a 4' phone and yet tablets still get the mobile version by default.

This issue is asking for a way to get the desktop version *of every site* by default, so users don't have to go around clicking on 'request desktop version' so often.

The solution could be for the mobile version redirect magic to be applied everywhere (ugg) or it could be some UA string foo. Talking to Gabe Rivera will not help.

Comment 8

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

(In reply to Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] from comment #6)
> This may be an evangelism issue but we need to acknowledge that certain
> companies may make a product decision to send tablets their mobile site. Can
> you confirm that alternative tablet browsers receive desktop content for
> Techmeme?

Techmeme on ipad does do the 'right' thing (i.e. send something that looks like the desktop version)

I understand that Techmeme (and hundreds of other sites) are part of the problem here, but the "Request Desktop Site" option is in recognition that evangelism has failed to move the needle before, and so we have an override switch. Essentially this request says: the phone version of a site is never likely to be appropriate for this 
tablet so apply the "Request Desktop Site" logic (or something similar) everywhere.

I think this falls back to evangelism if it's technically impossible, or ux-undesirable to have a "Request desktop site by default" option.

Thanks.

Comment 9

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

I actually see evangelism and in product change as two parallel pieces of work in this case. Thank you for clarifying your request with this bug.

Comment 10

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

(In reply to Joe Walker [:jwalker] from comment #7)
> Firefox on a 10' tablet has far more in common with an 11' laptop than it
> does with a 4' phone and yet tablets still get the mobile version by default.
> 
> This issue is asking for a way to get the desktop version *of every site* by
> default, so users don't have to go around clicking on 'request desktop
> version' so often.

Except for the sites that use things like onmouseover events for critical functionality. Or require flash when the user is running a device that doesn't have it. I don't think you can make a blanket assertion that the desktop version is always better than the mobile version for tablets; I think that's true in some cases but not all, and so switching the default UA string or behaviour is not guaranteed to be strictly better.

Comment 11

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

(In reply to Kartikaya Gupta (:kats) from comment #10)
> (In reply to Joe Walker [:jwalker] from comment #7)
> > Firefox on a 10' tablet has far more in common with an 11' laptop than it
> > does with a 4' phone and yet tablets still get the mobile version by default.
> > 
> > This issue is asking for a way to get the desktop version *of every site* by
> > default, so users don't have to go around clicking on 'request desktop
> > version' so often.
> 
> Except for the sites that use things like onmouseover events for critical
> functionality. Or require flash when the user is running a device that
> doesn't have it. I don't think you can make a blanket assertion that the
> desktop version is always better than the mobile version for tablets; I
> think that's true in some cases but not all, and so switching the default UA
> string or behaviour is not guaranteed to be strictly better.

Agreed, which is why this would be an option. The user would turn on 'default desktop' mode. Presumably they could then turn it off on a case by case basis too.

Interestingly for cases like my transformer, which has a keyboard, trackpad and (I think) flash support, I'm close to being able to make the blanket assertion that desktop is always best.

Comment 12

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

We already have a bug open for always requesting desktop sites.