Facebook Disables Zooming On iPad, Then Re-Enables It?
by Joe White
October 23, 2010
A couple of days ago, something pretty crazy happened in the mobile Facebook world. As the many iPad owners among you know, there's no such thing as a Facebook for iPad application. This means iPad owners have to update statuses and stalk Facebook friends through mobile Safari, at http://facebook.com.
However, this isn't as annoying as it sounds. Facebook.com loads up pretty quickly on the iPad, and interaction with the site isn't half bad. Obviously, this is due to Apple, rather than Facebook; zooming and scrolling gestures make mobile Safari browsing quick and easy. And, Facebook is no exception here.
That was, at least, until earlier this week, when a great many iPad owners (including TUAW) noticed that the iPad's famous pinch-to-zoom gesture was no longer working when viewing Facebook.com. As you might expect, the Twitterverse went insane at this point, with a great many Facebook users turning to Twitter to vent their anger; grateful that this social network has its own native iPad application.
It was soon discovered that, when visiting Facebook through the iPad's mobile Safari web browser, the following line of code appeared:
That was, at least, until earlier this week, when a great many iPad owners (including TUAW) noticed that the iPad's famous pinch-to-zoom gesture was no longer working when viewing Facebook.com. As you might expect, the Twitterverse went insane at this point, with a great many Facebook users turning to Twitter to vent their anger; grateful that this social network has its own native iPad application.
It was soon discovered that, when visiting Facebook through the iPad's mobile Safari web browser, the following line of code appeared:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />Apparently, the last "user-scalable=0;" stops the iPad's pinch-to-zoom feature from working. After a few days, Facebook finally got around to fixing the code, returning zooming abilities to iPad users. We're not sure whether the code was purposely implemented to stop iPad owners from pinching and zooming, but personally I think it was most likely a silly mistake. What do you think?
