On unity8 desktop, websites serve mobile version

[Michael Zanetti]

On unity8 on desktop, the webbrowser-app shows the mobile version of websites. This can be reproduced with e.g. http://github.com

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Apps on unity8 run with qtubuntu, and there is code in the browser that assumes that qtubuntu == mobile (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~phablet-team/webbrowser-app/trunk/view/head:/src/Ubuntu/Web/plugin.cpp#L127).
Until now this was a decent approximation, but not any longer.

Note that oxide doesn’t do a much better job at it, because it assumes that running on an android kernel + egl means mobile: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~oxide-developers/oxide/oxide.trunk/view/head:/shared/browser/oxide_form_factor_detection_linux.cc.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

It looks like we could use the screen’s physical dimensions to determine the form factor quite reliably.
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtquick-window-screen.html#pixelDensity-attached-prop would help.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Apparently blocked on bug #1504293.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Bug #1504293 has been fixed in qtubuntu, unblocking us.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.23+16.04.20151222.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.23+16.04.20151222.1-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  * Add keyboard shorcuts for 'next' (Ctrl+G) and 'previous'
    (Ctrl+Shift+G) while in find-in-page mode. (LP: #1522152)
  * Do not allow interacting with tabs and the chrome while the settings
    page is shown. (LP: #1524353)
  * Fix a crash when clearing the navigation history while the new tab
    view is open. (LP: #1525937)
  * Fix deleting multiple domains from the history view. Add unit tests
    for the HistoryView component. (LP: #1527144)
  * Fix some obvious issues in PreviewManager. (LP: #1519019)
  * Fix the tab preview sometimes covering the tab chrome, in the tabs
    view. Offset tab previews by 1px to cover the semi-transparent
    horizontal line at the bottom of the tab chrome asset. (LP:
    #1520624)
  * Recognize openoffice and MS-office file formats as documents, now
    that the document viewer app knows how to render them. (LP:
    #1523452)
  * Update translation template.
  * Use the screen size (diagonal in millimeters) to determine which
    default UA string and which UA overrides to use. An empirical
    threshold of 19cm is being used, it is subject to further
    adjustments. (LP: #1504084)

 -- Olivier Tilloy <email address hidden> Tue, 22 Dec 2015 18:15:54 +0000

[Kugi Eusebio (kugi-igi)]

I still get mobile sites on my Nexus 7 even on desktop mode. Is this bug only for the desktop and not for touch devices?

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The user agent we send now depends on the screen size (not the window size). On nexus 7, getting mobile sites is expected.
If you connect an external monitor, you should be getting desktop sites (but there is a known issue that prevents this, bug #1534682).