Internet and Browsing

How to View Full Desktop Versions of Websites on iPhone

Submitted by Fred Straker on March 19, 2015 - 11:55am

The Safari web browser on iPhone will identify itself as a mobile browser by default. As iOS users already know, this means many websites will deliver a mobile version of content to the device. Sometimes the mobile site is lacking in functionality or abbreviates information that is needed on the go.

The built-in Safari browser includes a simple way to see full sites on the iPhone, by requesting the desktop version. Here are instructions on how to view a full site in Safari:

1. Launch Safari and navigate to the website displaying a mobile version.

tags:

Tips

Internet and Browsing

Safari

Read more about How to View Full Desktop Versions of Websites on iPhone

How can I scroll in a text box on the iPhone?

When browsing the web in Mobile Safari, scrolling up and down is pretty simple. One finger will drag the whole page up or down to reveal the rest of the web page. The problem is that text boxes within web pages don't show scroll bars.

To scroll within the text area drag two fingers inside the text box instead of one. This will result in the text area scrolling in the direction you swipe, while the web page remains still.

tags:

Internet and Browsing

Read more about How can I scroll in a text box on the iPhone?

How can I search for or find text within a web page on the iPhone?

Update: iOS 9 has added a dedicated search function to Safari that allows you to search web pages for specific text.

Surprisingly, there is no native "find" function in the version of Safari that comes with the iPhone.

If you are browsing a large piece of content, and need to find a particular word or section of the page quickly, this can present a serious problem.

Thankfully, you can add a search or text finding function to Safari on your iPhone with relative ease through the use of bookmarklets.

Refer to this post for more information about bookmarklets and how to add them to your iPhone.

tags:

Internet and Browsing

Read more about How can I search for or find text within a web page on the iPhone?

Does the iPhone support bookmarklets?

For those of you unfamiliar with bookmarklets, a bookmarklet is a Javascript program stored within a URL (or sometimes within a web page as a hyperlink). These program add functionality to the browser. The term itself is a combination of the terms bookmark and applet (a small program or application).

tags:

Internet and Browsing

Read more about Does the iPhone support bookmarklets?

Does the iPhone support Flash?

No. The iPhone does not support flash.

Apple has been clear, up until this point, that they do not intend to support Flash on the iPhone. Adobe announced its own plans to support Flash on the iPhone when the iPhone SDK was released, but was forced to repeal their own comments when they discovered the SDK did not provide enough access to the iPhone OS "innards" to provide such support.

Future generations of the iPhone may support Flash, but for now, the answer is no.

tags:

Internet and Browsing

Read more about Does the iPhone support Flash?

Internet and Browsing

Pages