Common mobile-optimized sites use the <meta name="viewport">
tag like this:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
The viewport
element gives the browser instructions on how to control the page's dimensions and scaling based on the device you are using.
In the above example, content="width=device-width
means that the browser will render the width of the page at the width of its own screen. So if that screen is 480px wide
, the browser window will be 480px wide
. initial-scale=1
depicts that the initial zoom (which is 1 in this case, means it does not zoom).
Below are the attributes this tag supports:
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
width | The width of the virtual viewport of the device. Values1: device-width or the actual width in pixels, like 480 |
height | The height of the virtual viewport of the device. Values2: device-height or the actual width in pixels, like 600 |
initial-scale | The initial zoom when the page is loaded. 1.0 does not zoom. |
minimum-scale | The minimum amount the visitor can zoom on the page. 1.0 does not zoom. |
maximum-scale | The maximum amount the visitor can zoom on the page. 1.0 does not zoom. |
user-scalable | Allows the device to zoom in and out. Values are yes or no . If set to no, the user is not able to zoom in the webpage. The default is yes. Browser settings can ignore this rule. |
Notes:
1 The width
property can be either specified in pixels (width=600
) or by device-width (width=device-width
) which represents the physical width of the device's screen.
2 Similarly, the height
property can be either specified in pixels
(height=600
) or by device-height
(height=device-height
) which represents the physical height of the device's screen.