Stock Browser Default Zoom

[jeremyds45]

Hey all, did a search and couldn't come up with anything, here or google. Was wondering if there is a way to be able to have a default zoom farther out than it is now, especially when it comes to mobile sites? Just bought a note 3 att (but figure all note 3's have the same stock browser so i posted here) and do not care for there not being an option for default zoom like there was on my previous att s3. Attached are some screenshots, the ones that have more content and settings are actually my old s3, whereas the ones with lesser amount of content displayed are the note 3 (with att in the notification bar), which makes no sense.... More screen real estate = less displayed?? Newer = less settings??
Also what's up with there not being an option to sync google bookmarks now with stock browser?
And lastly, any root for att note 3 4.4.2? Searched and there are root methods for every other model except for the att version.
Too, I noted that the chrome browser app doesnt have an option for zoom either... Makes no sense not having a basic option like that
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[sarkycow]

Hey all, did a search and couldn't come up with anything, here or google. Was wondering if there is a way to be able to have a default zoom farther out than it is now, especially when it comes to mobile sites? Just bought a note 3 att (but figure all note 3's have the same stock browser so i posted here) and do not care for there not being an option for default zoom like there was on my previous att s3. Attached are some screenshots, the ones that have more content and settings are actually my old s3, whereas the ones with lesser amount of content displayed are the note 3 (with att in the notification bar), which makes no sense.... More screen real estate = less displayed?? Newer = less settings??
Also what's up with there not being an option to sync google bookmarks now with stock browser?
And lastly, any root for att note 3 4.4.2? Searched and there are root methods for every other model except for the att version.
Too, I noted that the chrome browser app doesnt have an option for zoom either... Makes no sense not having a basic option like that
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

I don't know if this is exactly what you want but it may work out.

On the stock Browser go to settings >> screen and text. There is a bar to reduce the size of the text which results in a more zoomed out type of page (I've included 2 screen shots - 1 at 100% and 1 at 80%). There is also an option to tick to stop websites from zooming in - you should tick that box. Also untick the box that says text booster at the bottom of the page.

I don't use Chrome but I do use Chrome beta. It has a similar type of setting. Go to settings >> accessibility and it will show the text scaling bar again, as well as the box to override the auto zoom from websites.

As for the root questions I'll leave that to someone who knows what their talking about!

Hope this helps somewhat.

Sarks.

Edit: forgot to add I cleared the cache (in the stock and chrome browsers) and rebooted afterwards as I find it sometimes doesn't change the font size until after I do this.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[jeremyds45]

Thanks for the help but the text size changing doesn't really change the zoom. And I did clear the cache when trying this. Still looking for a fix...

 

[MozzaJ]

I don't suppose you found an answer to this did you? I'm in the same boat. Looking to upgrade from a Note 2 but I've looked at a Note 3, 4 and other new android mobiles and the default zoom option seems to have been removed which means that content is compromised. All that lovely screen space is now just filled with bigger content. Seems like a backward step to me.

 

[ChromeShark]

This is due to the viewport now being 360px wide on pretty much every Android phone, even phablets like the Nexus 6. The original Note had a more suitable 400px, but I guess they found compatibility issues from websites that don't adjust correctly to the higher size, so now everyone plays it safe at uses a scaled-up 360px viewport.

I hope that now Apple have gone with an unusually high 415px Viewport for the iPhone 6+, web devs will be more likely to code their sites responsively and Android manufacturers will go back to using appropriate viewport sizes for their bigger phones.

I know this doesn't help fix your issue, but I hope it helps explain why manufactures have gone this way (I expect the option to remove the 'zoom' options is also due to incompatibility with certain websites).

 

[MozzaJ]

Thanks for the reply and that does provide an explanation.

The default zoom far option on my Note 2 gives me a viewport of 540px wide which gives me plenty of content on my screen. I'd love to upgrade to a new phone but would hate to lose this feature. It seems crazy that the new 6 inch screens on more modern phones are displaying the same amount of content as a 3 inch screen.

 

[Trees]

Good discussion and original question. ChromeShark brings up an important point about responsive design. I found a nice site that will display the viewport size /width via media query. Media query being a check for your device's display size. Viewport Width

A few sites below that provide more details about responsive design. For web sites that are not yet supporting a variety of screen sizes, or media, the zoom/text size options discussed and shown above are quite helpful.
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/rwd-fundamentals/
Responsive Web Design · An A List Apart Article

 

[eekboom]

Just thought that I share a solution for Firefox Mobile that a friendly developer on IRC told me:

In Firefox go to about:config and change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 2.5 (or experiment with values close to that).

Yay! Goodbuy stock browser, welcome Firefox.