One of the minor irritations of the ALDITCS is that Safari has no settings. You can't change the font, or its size, for god's sake! What is the thinking behind that?
So to my joy there are already several alternative browsers available, including an old friend, the excentric German browser iCab (now called iCabMobile).
And a browser named Atomic Browser, which has settings out the wazoo! Totally the antithesies to the bare-bones Safari mobile.
We'll see what's good for what, but it's good to know you're not stuck with Apple's training-wheel apps.
"One of the minor irritations of the ALDITCS is that Safari has no settings."
ReplyDeleteHere at the Institute for the Study of Unintentional Consequences, we have identified a spreading malaise connected to the increasing popularity of devices using Apple's iPhone OS.
If you visit the Starbucks website, you will observe that text only zooming is disabled. The Starbucks global CSS file contains a line that disables text zooming in WebKit browsers. That targets iApple devices, but also indiscriminately catches desktop Safari, too, and untested but presumably, other WebKit browsers (iCab, Chrome, OmniWeb, etc). Non WebKit browsers (eg Gecko etc. inc. Firefox) are unaffected:
http://www.starbucks.com/static/css/global.css
-webkit-text-size-adjust:none} /* prevent the iPhone text enlargement */
I'm confused, why the hell would they do that?
ReplyDelete"...why the hell would they do that?"
ReplyDeletehttp://is.gd/bCswC
Scroll down to "Adapting" for an executive overview. I am reluctant to make any accusations in the specific case of Starbucks, but many heavyweight corporate developers are remarkably parochial (often that means Windows and Explorer). If it runs OK on the in-house setup, then it is assumed it runs OK everywhere for everyone.
I wonder if anyone at Starbucks or their developers has actually checked it with a desktop WebKit browser on any platform. As Dr. Johnson replied, "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance." The world is full of pasterns.
Dixons, the UK electronics retailer, is an often quoted example of the parochial effect: back in the day, the whole site had to be pulled because it worked at sub-glacial speed when running over the Internet. It was claimed by some pundits that nobody had ever seen it running on anything except the local servers until the day it went live.
Interesting, thanks.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm still confused: what harm do they imagine might come to Starbucks or their site if people are allowed to zoom the text?