Does anyone know of a way to disable the mobile browser detection and redirect feature of Facebook via querystring parameters?
For example, if I go to www.facebook.com/CraigslistGenie in a mobile browser, I get redirected to http://m.facebook.com/CraigslistGenie. I would like the user to stay on the www version of the page.
you either change the user-agent to achieve that or you add ?m2w to the link i.e. http://www.facebook.com/CraigslistGenie/?m2w does NOT redirect (tested on Android) while http://www.facebook.com/CraigslistGenie does redirect to http://m.facebook.com/CraigslistGenie
For reference see here and here.
The first answer is correct, however if you want it to work on an Android phone (and keep working when you click on links within the site) you need to go into the browser settings (after you've gone to the http://facebook.com?m2w) and check the "Desktop version" setting.
This will prevent the browser from constantly trying to send you to either the mobile version of the site or the FB app.
Method given by Yahia is good. Adding ?m2w to link means converting mobile to web view.
Or,
Change settings of mobile browser i.e. User Agent. Both Steel and Dolphin browsers allow you to change that setting however. Both are free in the market. (I am not doing any marketing of browsers.)
Some of you may have noticed that, despite changing the User-Agent in the browser, you are still sent to a mobile website anyway. Check this patches given.
Check this huge discussion about tricks used for hiding mobile browser.
Related
Usually, when you browse mobile website on iPhone it displays correctly.
But when I put the same website in iframe and try to access it through another website,
the mobile website is stretched and zoomed out, as if it is displayed on the desktop browser.
How to fix it?
Usually a website that offers a mobile version asks which kind of client is calling the URL. Your iPhone's browser provides that information. When accessing the site through an iFrame, the client information can't be passed to the target website but only to the surrounding HTML that defines the iFrame.
iFrames generally are not recommended to use on iPhones.
See there:
iFrames and iPhones
We have a post on a FB wall. It points to http://tinyurl.com/{something}.
When the link is clicked in a non-mobile web browser, it works fine: TinyURL redirects the user to our web site using the appropriate URI including a special querystring.
When the link is clicked in a mobile web browser on my Android, it fails with the error in the title of this question.
When the link is clicked in the FB native app for iPad and in Safari on the iPad, it works fine.
I have tried adding our URL to the Mobile Web setting in the Basic Settings tab of the FB App configuration. That results in all links pointing directly to the root of our web site with a funky set of parameters in a querystring -- in other words, it doesn't follow the TinyURL in that particular case. The funky parameters include "refid", "ref", and "ft".
So primarily my question is: Why, when I specify the URL in the Mobile Web setting as described in the previous paragraph, does it redirect to our main URL instead of the TinyURL link originally called for?
I think this is something Facebook broke very recently (perhaps even today?). When a user clicks on any links to our app from inside the Facebook native iOS app, they get this error "Either this application has not configured its Mobile Web URL or the URL could not be verified as owned by the application. Unable to redirect." We had never set a Mobile Web URL previously, and everything had been fine since we launched the app over a year ago. We sent all mobile clicks to the same URL's as desktop browsers and handled the mobile rendering server-side. We have not changed our application domain inside the App Settings or anything like that.
In the App Settings, can set a Mobile Web URL to our homepage and the link works (and the error message goes away) but that's not the desired behavior at all - it would mean that all links end up at the same Mobile Web URL regardless of what the link was!
Was this change made on purpose by Facebook and if so why? There's been no mention of this whatsoever on the Developer Blog.
Update 3/21 8:10am PST:
I've since found this to be a widespread problem, not just for a few apps. Just by clicking around I've seen this error on posts to weather.com, youtube, msn.com and a dozen others. It happens on both clicks from the Timeline as well as the News Feed (although strangely sometimes the same post works on one, but not the other!), and from the m.facebook.com mobile web app as well as the native iOS app.
I commented on http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/302635863137683 but no word from Facebook yet. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this right now, this is a major bug.
In your app, go to Settings -> Add platform -> Website
Add both, Website URL and Moblie Website (Yes, you need these both), then your app will be able to be opened from facebook native app.
You will also need the FB Canvas.
Same here, I recently noted that all links of items shared with our Adroid or iPhone app are broken. This only happens with the mobile version of Facebook the Desktop web version is still working. What is actually wrong on the mobile version is that the original shared url is replaced with a m.facebook url that ends with "?ref=unknown&refid=0&ft=fbid.332036910178718%3Ainterface.m_touch%3Ac.m" When user click on it Facebook is redirecting the user to the App's "Mobile Web URL" + "?ref=unknown&refid=0&ft=fbid.332036910178718%3Ainterface.m_touch%3Ac.m" instead of the original shared url.
My opinion is that this is an issue of Facebook that is redirecting the url to the wrong location, "Mobile Web URL" instead of the original post url.
Ok not working. What is going on, 1st directed to something about itunes url. I am on an Android not an Iphone. Sad state when an disabled person is unable to gain access the same as others. This is bad for all users.
I'm working on an iframe style app that pulls the facebook optimized page available at http://store.starrco.com/?store_mode=facebook. I've done other, admittedly much simpler, iframe apps before without issue but though I've configured this one more or less the same when I try to view the canvas url it remains blank.
My settings can be seen here: http://www.abstraktmg.com/clients/starrco/starrcofbsettings.jpg
I've tried a few different permutations of this with the same results, this is the most complete setup though and most closely matches the settings template I was given.
This page is being generated by Webasyst's shop-script, which is specifically supposed to support this. The obvious answer then is to contact their support which I did, but after assuring them that my app settings matched their template, they said I needed to contact Facebook support and this is as close as I could find to any proper support system.
I checked both http and https versions of store.starrco.com/?store_mode=facebook and both worked outside of facebook.
However, there may be some framebusting code which might prevent the site from being loaded in an iframe. And I see that your settings appear to be missing the app domain entry.
I ran into the same problem, especially in Chrome and Firefox. The problem is, when the user is surfing with https on Facebook, the https Version of the iframe is called. But the browser do not show invalid certificate problems until you to right click page information.
You need to have a signed SSL cert by a CA trusted in the browser.
If the user has accepted it without the iframe - outside of Facebook, it works.
I currently have a custom app on Facebook that works fine on desktop PC's (full version of Facebook). As you would know you can't access custom apps from mobile devices and it redirects you to the wall of the page.
Is there a way to redirect them to a mobile web app if they try to access the app from a mobile device? So that way when people share links to the app I can at least show them something.
I saw the Mobile Web URL option in my app but am unsure on how this will actually work.
You are referring to the "mobile tab access" Vitrue announced this week? :)
What they are doing is this (basically):
Create a special link to the tab (mydomain.com/tablink1 or something, NOT the ?sk=app_xxxx URL in the browser bar)
On that link they have code which does a conditional redirect
If it's a regular browser/device, redirect to the tab (?sk=app_xxxx)
If it's a mobile browser/device, redirect to an alternate mobile webpage with the same content as the tab (mydomain.com/mobilecontent1)
The redirect is not on the actual tab, since the mobile browsers will never get there. It has to be on a separate page.
So if they try to access the tab on a mobile device with the regular tab URL they will not get redirected. It only works if they go to the special redirect URL. Vitrue's application publishes that special redirect URL to the Page wall.
It works very well to make sure everything you post to your Wall (which mobile users can see) does not break, but it does not really provide a redirect for mobile users trying to get to your tab.
That's the best we can do right now though, until Facebook actually comes up with a mobile tab solution (bug filed here: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/264010470314544)
Good luck!
For example, the following URL shows the app in a tab:
https://www.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325
But when on a mobile device it redirects to the mobile site and does not show the tab or even have a link to it:
https://m.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325
I even have the application tab set as the Default Landing Tab for this page, but cannot get the pap to show for the page. Is there another format we need to develop for the App to support mobile? Ideally we would like to show the tab on iPhone app and other mobile viewing.
If you're in control of the link the user clicks on to reach your fanpage/pagetab-combination, then try adding a GET parameter ref=ts
h++ps://www.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325&ref=ts
Apparently this prevents the redirect to the mobile version of facebook.
There's not currently any way to see App-provided Page tabs on the m.facebook.com site
Mobile web apps are supported, but they're not tied to the Page and need to be manually linked-to or bookmarked, the tab functionality simply doesn't exist now.
Currently you can develop application functions such as app authorisation but sadly no, you can't display standard iFramed tab apps, I suspect this is because of slow 3G data speeds and the fact that Facebook wouldn't want the mobile experience being any slower than it already is (dependent on external hosting etc).
Many of my larger clients are begging for it. The only workaround I use is to build an external page with the same content used in the iFrame - then you can direct users to the tab or mobile users to an external link.
https://www.facebook.com/pagename/app_000000000000000?ref=page_internal
as of now ref=page_internal is working as a work around.
You can redirect Mobile users to a specific mobile website, and have desktop users redirected to your page tab app.
Detailed instructions for doing this are available here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/15860533/121285