Web page does not show like it should on Android 2.2

[nokix]

dear all,

i am developing a web page to show on smartphone browsers. when i was testing my page on android, i ran into some strange behaviours.

as usual, there is a development platform, which can be accessed via internal IP, and a production platform, which is open to public.

the strange thing is that web pages show differently between the two platforms. on production platform, everything (images and text) on the page is bigger, as if it has been zoomed in, and it cannot be zoomed out. this happened on android 2.2 browsers (on phones and on an emulator).

however, when i try things on an android 2.1 browser (on a motorola xt701), everything looks fine and identical on both platforms.

this observation has led me to believe that the android 2.2 browsers are using an external html validator, like the http://validator.w3.org/. if i enter the address of my development platform, which is an internal IP, to http://validator.w3.org/, it cannot validate because http://validator.w3.org/ cannot reach my internal development platform and therefore, it does not validate the pages on my development platform and does not mess things up.

so my next logical step was to attach a doctype tag at the start of the pages and write the pages conforming to the standards. i have tried html 4 and 5 but things on production platform still appear zoomed in.

by the way, i am using WAMP on both the development and production platforms. and i believe there should not be any critical differences between the two to have caused the problem, because the problem does not exists on android 2.1 browers.

so i am now kind of stuck. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

nokix

[nokix]

i have just tried the following test (i could not believe i had not tried that already).

i just made a very simple "hello world" html (without any formatting or tables), placed it on the production server, and accessed it via internal IP and external address. and the one accessed via the external address appears zoomed in on load, without the ability to zoom out again. and this happened on both android 2.1 and 2.2.

then i applied all the css font settings (family, size, style, variant, weight) just to test if the android browsers need all the font settings to display things properly. the result is still the same.

can i safely assure that it is an android bug so that i will have to have a separate font settings for android browsers?

[nokix]

after further investigation, i've found that the browser isn't trying to validate the html. it's more about the zooming.

consider the following test:
2 html pages, A & B. page A contains a textbox, a password box and a submit button, lined up vertically one on top of another. page B is a list of items in a table with two columns.
the "Default zoom" setting of the browser, tested on two settings, "Far" and "Medium".
an internal and external address to access the pages.

and here are the results:

test cases                                      results
#       page    zoom    address                 relative size on load   can zoom in     can zoom out
1       A       Medium  internal                M                       Y               N
2       A       Far     internal                M                       Y               N
3       A       Medium  external                2 * M                   Y               N
4       A       Far     external                1.5 * M                 Y               N
5       B       Medium  internal                N                       Y               N
6       B       Far     internal                N                       Y               N
7       B       Medium  external                2 * N + Z               Y               Y
8       B       Far     external                2 * N                   Y               N

for the last 2 test cases, #7, when zoomed all the way out using the zoom out button, becomes the same size as #8. #8 is the normal view that shows everything on the page.

now i'm not sure if this makes any sense or means anything at all. it's what i've found out anyway.

i haven't tested the "Auto-fit pages" setting either, and i probably won't test it.

i've also given up using two different font sizes for android browsers and other browsers. i'm using the font size that yields the above results. so browsers with "Default zoom" set to "Medium" will ha
ve to zoom out manually to be able to view the whole page (#7).

one thing still puzzles me is that why the pages behave differently between internal and external addresses.