How will websites view the iPad?

jwootton

There are some websites when viewing on the iphone that automatically recognize my iPhone as a mobile device and push their mobile site on me. While this is nice sometimes, it's annoying when I really want to get to something on the full site.

They often have some "View the normal site" link, sometimes they don't though.

My question is though, how will they treat the iPad since it is running an iPhone OS and an iPhone Safari. I'm assuming Apple has thought of this and it won't be a problem, but if they haven't and websites try to push their mobile site on me on the iPad, I won't be very happy.

l84toff

Not all sites do this. Some sites recognize you're on an iPhone (or mobile device) and give the user the choice of going to their mobile (or iPhone) site. I quite like having this choice.

Not that we'll know the answer until it's in one of our hands, I mean your hands, but I suspect it'll be just as with the iPhone and touch. But that's just an uneducated opinion based on the fact the iPad also runs on the same mobile platform the iPhone does.

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jwootton

I am really hoping that Apple has thought about this, because I don't think they'll be able to substantiate their claim that surfing the web is better than on a laptop if you keep running in to mobile optimized sites.

Has anyone seen any documentation on this? Can you optimize a website specifically for the iPad?

Chas3

No website will ever be optimized, Apple won't let its users use flash or java, and the html5 switch is a long time away.

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fyrefly

It's all in the hands of website developers. The iPad will identify itself as the iPad to websites, and they will have to be programmed to handle the iPad differently than the iPhone/iPod Touch. apple has nothing to do with this (other than they can lean on web developers to try and make sure the iPad identification is respected.

Like right now for instance, when I surf to a website, my computer tells that website:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10

So the iPad will tell websites similar info.

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jwootton

Thanks Fyrefly, I didn't know the specifics of what information computers and smartphones give websites and was worried the iPad would be identified by iPhone OS and treated the same way.

fyrefly

It will be identified as the iPhone OS (Mobile Safari), but it will also identify the Device. It's similar to how the iPhone and iPod Touch identify themselves differently:

iPod Touch:
Mozila/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Geckto) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A101a Safari/419.3

iPhone:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1C28 Safari/419.3

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jwootton

I find it interesting that a device that Apple has toted as being "the best way to surf the web" could be crippled if websites don't recognize it as being able to display full web pages.

As for the limitations of not having flash, I don't use flash that much. For all the gripe I have heard about this, I have yet to see a list of websites that people will miss because they don't have flash (albeit, I haven't really been looking).

So, what are we missing without flash?

l84toff

Well, The Story of Stuff for one (something everyone should watch - my kids have even watched this in school). I find quite a few sites have flash but I suppose if you're visiting those sites on your iPhone you'll never know what your missing, that's true. The same can be said for not getting an iPad, I'll never know what I'm not missing.

We can argue the merits of flash for a long time, the point is its out there. It's on the sites we go to. And I don't really care about ads that are flash (won't miss those at all), that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actual flash content.

I have to agree with jwootton. How can you say it's the best browsing experience - I suppose they will get off on a technicality here, since they said best way to surf the web, presumably meaning holding it in your hand on the iPad and not specifically being able to access every site. It might be the best way to view some of your sites...

I certainly wouldn't call that a feature, crippled maybe.

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