Mobile site stretching? Easy viewport fix!

[magicjj]

Hello fellow webOS users!

There are several websites programmed for mobile phones with larger buttons and simple styles, however since they weren't programmed for any platform in particular they lack the viewport meta tag.

What does this mean? This means rather than looking like [third image attachment], they look like [first image attachment]. The site is stretched out to the default nine hundred and whatever pixels that the webOS is programmed for. The styles are simple but you have to zoom and drag all over the place.

So to make it look like [third image attachment], do [second image attachment]!

After a bit of trial and error I created a new Yubnub command that fixes the issue. Yubnub is a "command line for the internet" and it works similar to the Keytoss Keyword Powered Search, but has many other features which make it very powerful. If anybody knows how to make Yubnub the default search engine for the Palm Pre, please let me know!!

You don't need to know how YubNub works to use this command, however. Just follow the three simple steps below.

The example in the pictures is of Chase Bank's mobile website at http://www.chase.mobi. If you have no need for this URL, I still recommend following the steps using it as it is a prime example of what I'm talking about. Point your browser to http://www.chase.mobi first so you can see the before and after for yourself, then follow the steps.

1. Point your Palm Pre's browser to YubNub - YubNub.org.
2. In the text box, input "viewport [URL of site here]". See [second image attachment].
3. Wait for the page to load. If it looks better, bookmark the new page with the desired title or add it to your launcher. The new URL will do the processing for you, and each time you use the new bookmark the site will load prettily again.

Hope this comes in handy,

Jake
jacobensor.com

[davis.rob]

Pretty slick ... my banking web site was like that and now looks a lot nicer

[glenada]

BTW, how do you delete bookmarks?

[knobbysideup]

hrm. May try that with Ski Roundtop 2008-2009 Lodging That site comes up tiny, and a double-tap always fixes it. It'd be nice to eliminate the double tap.

**EDIT: Works really well. Thanks! Hopefully yubnub sticks around and isn't flooded when I use it with some of these sites.

[magicjj]

I've been using Yubnub for years and I can only recall it going down once for a few hours!

If you have problems with it let me know and I can host a page for you on my server that would do the same thing.

BTW, should I also post this on the Pixi forum? It should work on the Pixi the exact same way.

[Zoen22]

i hope this issue is fixed in a future update soon, thanks for the fix but i hate having to workaround.

[ChaosMarine03]

woker for me thanks!

[knobbysideup]

Originally Posted by magicjj

I've been using Yubnub for years and I can only recall it going down once for a few hours!

If you have problems with it let me know and I can host a page for you on my server that would do the same thing.

BTW, should I also post this on the Pixi forum? It should work on the Pixi the exact same way.

That's an even better idea. And a reason to get my webserver back online :-\ People are wondering where my code repositories from freshmeat went off to.

[magicjj]

Originally Posted by knobbysideup

That's an even better idea. And a reason to get my webserver back online :-\ People are wondering where my code repositories from freshmeat went off to.

Haha. Well the only difference on the front end is that of the URL being shorter. Yubnub's servers are probably more reliable than my own. I could have hosted a page that does the processing on my server rather than going through Yubnub but I thought this would work out better in the end.

I do have two static ones that I added some stuff to for personal use on my server, but the obvious benefit of making it dynamic like this is that any dumbie can follow those three steps :P

Glad you guys are finding this useful!

Jake

[odontastic]

Could this be turned into a patch for the webOS browser?

[squeff]

Yay! I've been trying to do this for quite some time, with no success. Now, my office's mobile web client is usable on my Pre.

[Bryan Lane]

Originally Posted by glenada

BTW, how do you delete bookmarks?

Click on the "Web" button at the top of the browser, select Bookmarks (not Add Bookmark...look farther down). This brings up a list of your book marks.

You delete one by sliding it to right or left off screen and then click "Delete' button.

You can reorder Bookmarks by dragging and dropping into the order you want to see them on screen.

[samkim]

You can access YubNub via KeyToss with the keyword @yn.

I'll also look into adding this viewport feature to KeyToss in the future...

[cwgtex]

Thanks! I read news articles of my favorite team quite often at m.dallascowboys.com and I always had to read in landscape mode with tiny text. The iphone user agent tweak didn't alleviate this.

Your solution works perfectly though! This will save me much squinting.

[JohnnyPre]

could someone aries this into an app?

[davis.rob]

I just wanted to cross-reference this thread to another discussion of the same issue (older WAP sites not displaying large enough). In this thread:

http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...-question.html

Garret92c found that using a properly formatted mobile web site in landscape mode will (somehow) affect the older style site when you switch to it. The YubNub fix works great if you plan on bookmarking it, but if you happen to just stumble into one of these older WAP sites, do this ...

Just immediately go to one of your bookmarked mobile sites that is properly formatted for the Pre (like m.google.com or m.precentral.net), tilt to landscape mode and back to portrait, then hit the 'backup' arrow/button to return to the "tiny text" site. Magic!

[magicjj]

Sweet, thanks for the heads up!

[neve]

Is there any way to save this launcher bookmark? I love saving pages as launcher icons, but I know someday I'll need to doctor my pre or clean slate it somehow. I've put a fair amount of work into creating little icons and I'd love to back them up, or even share them!

I'm imagining there simply must be a file somewhere for each of those, a little png with an associated url. Where oh where?

[magicjj]

Originally Posted by neve

Is there any way to save this launcher bookmark? I love saving pages as launcher icons, but I know someday I'll need to doctor my pre or clean slate it somehow. I've put a fair amount of work into creating little icons and I'd love to back them up, or even share them!

I'm imagining there simply must be a file somewhere for each of those, a little png with an associated url. Where oh where?

I'd also like to know this. Being able to back them up would be nice, and so would being able to replace the PNG files if you want to make an icon on your computer. If anybody knows anything please share!

[Grizzld]

Wow!! Thanks for pointing this out.