Post by @vale@fedi.vale.rocks

Does anyone have any evidence that initial-scale=1 is needed?

It used to stop unwanted zooming behaviour on pages when rotating an iPhone to landscape, but I can’t find any evidence that it has any effect any more.

In testing I can’t find any effect anywhere else either.

It is such a common feature of people’s HTML boilerplates but I’m not seeing any evidence of it being necessary any more. It seems firmly vestigial unless I’m missing something.

3 Replies

1 Boost

ppk 🇪🇺

@ppk@front-end.social 4 hr. ago

@vale You are correct, initial-scale=1 is no longer needed for Safari/iPhone. (Did not test iPad.)

In fact, secretly, in the past *only* initial-scale=1 was required; width=device-width was not. But no one ever took it out of their code.

Except in IE10 Mobile, where initial-scale=1 did not work. But we have long stopped caring about IE10 Mobile.

But now it doesn't matter any more which one you use when the iPhone is concerned.

In case you want to test it yourself:
https://quirksmode.org/m/tests/meta-viewport.html

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Vale

@vale@fedi.vale.rocks 2 hr. ago

@ppk I found the same in my testing (I also tested on iPad). Seems it is a vestigial feature of most people’s HTML.

I’ll be writing up a blog post with the history of why it was needed and why it isn’t relevant any longer. I’ve already got much of the story typed up for another draft article. Really interesting stuff.

Thanks for the further detail!

ppk 🇪🇺

@ppk@front-end.social 2 hr. ago

@vale Oops! I'm also writing an article about this, because I was partly responsible for the popularity of this snippet.

I just need clarity on FF Android.