I have a (rather simple) website that I wish to automatically scale and adjust such that the main content area fits in the screen without horizontal scrolling on iPad. On Landscape mode it works fine, however on portrait mode it leaves out part of it on the side, and the user has to scroll horizontally. It normally works fine for other websites I did, but for this one I can't understand what is stopping Safari from doing this.
I added the following line at the top of the HTML but it doesn't seem to have any effect (I tried various alternatives like adding the initial-scale=1.0
etc. too)
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, maximum-scale=1.0" />
What could be the reason this is not working?
Clarification
I am not looking for a media query solution. I am just trying to understand why for some sites the iPad (and other touch devices) automatically scale down a website to fit on screen, while in this case something is causing it not to. I am just trying to identify the reason for it.
I finally figured out the problem. iPad (and most touch devices) actually scale the website automatically, without the need of the <meta name="viewport" ... >
if the website is not explicitly designed to be responsive.
However, this scaling does not seem to work when the website is too wide. My content was 1024px wide, which for some reason was triggering the devices to turn off scaling.
I changed the content's width to 960px (I don't know the actual threshold, but my other site that scales well had this width) and the issue was immediately fixed.
Adding this answer in case someone is looking for a reason why scaling is not working on his site.
Obviously this is not related to having a responsive site, this is just when the website is simple and scaling is enough.