874732 - Users should be able to override "optimized for mobile" for zooming purposes

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 852247

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Stephen Moehle]

There should be a setting that would cause Firefox to ignore "optimized for mobile" and allow zooming (both pinch and double tab) on such pages.

The reason for this is that the text on "optimized for mobile" pages is often too small for me to read comfortably. This is especially true if I am not wearing my reading glasses or if I have been staring at a monitor all day and my eyes are tired. It would be a huge help to me to be able to zoom in on those pages and make the text a readable size. I strongly suspect that this is an issue that will be faced by most of your older users and those without perfect vision.

See bug 873721 comment #3 for more. As I stated in that bug, I think that I should be the one to decide if text is large enough to be readable and not the web designer.

Comment 1

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

Try setting the browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable pref to true in your about:config options. Is that what you're looking for?

Comment 2

[Stephen Moehle]

browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable does indeed do what I am asking for. There is a glitch with it, however. When I went into about:config, it was listed as having a default value of true, but it was not until I toggled it to false and back to true again that it had any effect.

So now that the settings I was requesting already exists, I think it should be exposed on the Settings page. Really, how is anyone supposed to know about things like this? I searched support.mozilla.org for zoom and browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable and could not find any mention of this setting.

Comment 3

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

(In reply to Stephen Moehle from comment #2)
> browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable does indeed do what I am asking for.
> There is a glitch with it, however. When I went into about:config, it was
> listed as having a default value of true, but it was not until I toggled it
> to false and back to true again that it had any effect.

Hm, I don't see this on my Nexus 4. Is this reproducible for you?

> So now that the settings I was requesting already exists, I think it should
> be exposed on the Settings page.

That's for the UX team to decide. CC'ing liuche who's working on the settings UI redesign - maybe we can fit this in the new "accessibility" section.

> Really, how is anyone supposed to know
> about things like this? I searched support.mozilla.org for zoom and
> browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable and could not find any mention of this
> setting.

That's a valid point. I don't know if there's some place prefs are supposed to be documented. This is probably one that should be on SUMO or the wiki somewhere. Roland, is a KB article the best place for something like this? There are probably other prefs that would be benefit from being documented in a easily-findable place.

Comment 4

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

Hi kats and Stephen Mohle:

We generally do NOT document hidden prefs aka "prefs" on SUMO (support.mozilla.org) because hidden preferences are not really friendly to normal users and can break or be removed at any time. Therefore, there's no central SUMO article for prefs. We will make an exception if a pref is generally applicable to a problem that affects lots of users.

The preferred "proper" solution is to have a proper settings UI which I will defer to UX to decide if/when/how we should do this.

So I would advocate for a proper solution with a settings UI to this problem of: "Users should be able to override "optimized for mobile" for zooming purposes" rather than a hidden pref.

If we don't plan on implementing a proper solution and this affects lots of users then we can revisit this.

In the meantime, in Firefox for Android there is (as you probably know) a "Request Desktop Site" menu item which might help for some sites. And of course there are add-ons that might help as well such as "Phony" and "Always Zoom" and "Desktop by Default":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/desktop-by-default/

Comment 5

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

Thanks Roland.

Ian, what do you think about adding an option to the settings to force-allow zooming on pages which disable it? I do think this is a pretty useful feature in terms of accessibility.

Comment 6

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

Would it be better to have a primary UI option for default text size?

Comment 7

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Brad Lassey [:blassey] from comment #6)
> Would it be better to have a primary UI option for default text size?

That would have been my suggestion too -- does the text size chooser in Settings typically work on mobile sites right now?

Comment 8

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

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #7)
> That would have been my suggestion too -- does the text size chooser in
> Settings typically work on mobile sites right now?

I believe the answer is no, but I'm not sure. AFAIK the text size chooser affects font inflation properties, and font inflation is disabled on a lot of optimized-for-mobile sites.

Comment 10

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Mass change to move Firefox for Android::Readability bugs to block bug 1129033. Filter on readability-mass-move.

Comment 11

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

There is an extension that flips the pref in comment 1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/always-zoom/

Comment 13

[Nicolae Albu]

I think this is fixed in Firefox 38. After updating to it, I have a new option in Display: "Always enable zoom".
Can anyone confirm and mark resolved?

Comment 15

[Matthias Zahn]

Hi,

with my new LG G4 and FF 41.0.2, I have the same problem. I can't zoom mobile websites at all. Desktop version working fine. Any hint or solution ??

Comment 16

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

Under Settings -> Display there is an option to "Always enable zoom". If you check that you should be able to zoom mobile websites that disallow zooming.

Comment 17

[Matthias Zahn]

(In reply to Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail]) from comment #16)
> Under Settings -> Display there is an option to "Always enable zoom". If you
> check that you should be able to zoom mobile websites that disallow zooming.

Hi,

Thx, but this option has been already enabled. But it does nothing on my LG G4 (Nexus 5 been worked in the past, but the maximum zoom level was very small). Browsers based on Webview or Chrome are working fine.