CNN.com forces you to their mobile site

[StealthLSU]

is there anyway to stop sites from doing this? Google does the same thing but at least gives you a button to go to the real site.

I mean, a huge marketing tool for the iphone was that you see the real internet, not this m.cnn.com crap.

Any help? I hate mobile sites, I want all regular sites.

[chris]

I'd just suggest writing them. I've had similar experiences with CBS Sportsline years ago when I was using the Treo. Same thing, one year they just pushed me to the mobile site. It was super frustrating, as you usually miss out on a number of features.

[Youngbinks]

Have you tried finding a "PC" button or a "Regular Site" button? I assume you have but sometimes they're really a hassle to find.

[Griffinaz]

I think what has to happen is not on the site end, but on the phone end. I think that they need to add a feature within Safari to mimic IE.6 or another desktop browser. My PDA's have that option in the browser so when I go to sites it thinks it is a regular desktop computer and shows the full pages.

[StealthLSU]

Originally Posted by Griffinaz

I think what has to happen is not on the site end, but on the phone end. I think that they need to add a feature within Safari to mimic IE.6 or another desktop browser. My PDA's have that option in the browser so when I go to sites it thinks it is a regular desktop computer and shows the full pages.

That is what I hope to see sometime in the near future. I don't see the button on CNN, which I have looked for.

Hell, even google forces it on you, and they have a button to go to the normal webpage. But it does not save your information as the next time you go there, it will bring you back to the mobile page forcing you to go to 2 webpages just to go to the original page.

[adseguy]

Originally Posted by Griffinaz

I think what has to happen is not on the site end, but on the phone end. I think that they need to add a feature within Safari to mimic IE.6 or another desktop browser. My PDA's have that option in the browser so when I go to sites it thinks it is a regular desktop computer and shows the full pages.

Safari IS the browser. Just like on a Mac. It doesn't need to mimic anything. The problem is on the web site administrators end. They programmed it so when someone looks at their webpage with the iPhone screen resolution it wants to optimize it for that. CNN purposely did this for iPhones and IMO most people hate it.

[kdarling]

Often this simply means that the programmer for that site has an iPhone themselves. Some people prefer a mobile site at times, for speed of download and ease of use. (I do sometimes, when I want to read news quickly. Scrolling around on a tiny screen is for people who have the time.)

For those who don't program web, here's how it works. Every browser sends a User Agent string with each request. In the case of the iPhone, it says something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

So the web site programmer watches for "iPhone" or "Mobile". (The iPod touch sends "Touch" I think instead of "iPhone".)

As someone else mentioned, iPhone Safari needs an option to send a different User Agent. It'd be best if it could be saved on a per-bookmark basis, too.

In the meantime, you should write the site and ask that they also include a way for iPhone users to get in and keep the original format.

[styfle]

does that mean it is possible to create a spoof app for the iphone to fake that string?
im almost possitive there are things for computers that do that

[Ramesh]

That sucks! It used to be regular, now it's all stupid. I hate mobile sites. The whole reason I got the iPhone with no flash.

[jjvaldez]

email the link to yourself from a desktop/laptop and click that link then bookmark it that is what I did to get around a mobile site