Develop Reference

How to prevent mobile device to resize and use proper css file

to prevent horizontal scrolling in my web pages, I have used 3 different stylesheets for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. I try to tell the browser to use the proper css file with the following tags in the head of the html file:
<link href="static/css/cssL.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(min-width:1000px)" />
<link href="static/css/cssM.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(min-width:551px) and (max-width:999px)" />
<link href="static/css/cssS.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:550px)" />
by doing so, I expect the mobile browsers to use cssS.css. but when I checked the website in a Samsung mobile phone, It appears to be using cssL.css and shrinks webpage to prevent horizontal scroll bar. this way, texts are very small and unreadable.
is there anything wrong with the approach?
What am I missing?
thank you very much.

Try the below meta tag
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=0">

Chrome on Android has an accessibility setting that allows users to zoom in and out even if the page requests that it not be zoomable. So you may have the user-scalable setting set as you want but the browser is ignoring you. Some accessibility proponents will argue that you should never disable zooming. http://adrianroselli.com/2015/10/dont-disable-zoom.html

Conflicting Favicons

My Blogger site generates the following line:
<link href='http://www.mtscollective.com/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
And I've also added the following line for Android to use when the site is saved to the home screen:
<link href='http://cdn.mtscollective.com/images/android/icon-196.png' rel='icon' sizes='196x196'/>
The problem is that sometimes Chrome and Firefox use these interchangeably, but I only want them to use the first line. Is it possible to control this?
Thanks

Firefox and Chrome tend to favor PNG pictures over favicon.ico. So you should also declare a 16x16 PNG picture, along with your existing 196x196 picture.
Also note that Firefox uses the last declared PNG picture (this is bug 751712). Make sure you declare the 16x16 picture last:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/path/to/icons/favicon.ico">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/path/to/icons/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/path/to/icons/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16">
Finally, both Firefox and Chrome lack support for the sizes attribute. As a consequence, during the first visit, they will load both PNG pictures (these are bug 751712 (FireFox) and issue 324820 (Chrome)). This is not a serious issue, but good to know this.

Website Bookmark/ Shortcut Icon for Android Help. Cant get passed standard ribbon icon

I have a website with a mobile version and I am trying to get it so that when someone chooses to Bookmark the website or 'Add to home screen' it will save an Icon to the home screen. I have an Android Samsung Galaxy S3 and no matter what I try I cannot get it to use the icon instead of the standard ribbon with tiny preview in the middle.
Currently..The below code will get it to display the standard ribbon with tiny preview of favicon image but will not display the entire icon:
<link rel="icon" href="http://www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"/>
I have also tried this code as well which only yields the standard ribbon icon when I add the bookmark to my homescreen. Not even a tiny preview like above:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://www.mydomain.com/customicon.ico"/>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="http://www.mydomain.com/customicon.ico"/>
Note: I have also tried 1) Placing the icon files in the root. 2) Naming the filename to apple-touch-icon-precomposed.ico. 3) Icon is 57x57 and under 40 kb.
I know there is some way to accomplish this because I tested a couple of websites like AOL, and eBay and both save to my home screen with a normal sized icon that appears like an app.
If anyone has run into the same problem and found a solution that works please let me know. I am stumped!

The entire issue was because the website was .htaccess password protected for testing purposes during design and development. All I had to do was move the folder that contained all icons outside of the password protected directory!
The following code is what I used and is now working:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="144x144" href="http://m.mydomain.com/touch-icon-ipad-retina.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="114x114" href="http://m.mydomain.com/touch-icon-iphone-retina.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="72x72" href="http://m.mydomain.com/touch-icon-ipad.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://m.mydomain.com/touch-icon-iphone.png" />
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black" />

How to define the website screen shortcut icon?

I can't find how to make Android use a custom icon (e.g. the favicon or the app-touch image that iOS uses) for a website shortcut.
Can you give me a hint?

Android uses a home screen image AND a "Shortcut icon" (like favicon). If you only specify the home screen icon, the web page will not display an icon next to the URL in the web browser.
The "shortcut icon" must be listed separately, even though it can be the same file.
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/icon57.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/icon57.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="72x72" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/icon72.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="114x114" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/icon114.png" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="144x144" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/icon144.png" />
Relative URLs will work for many devices, but most sources say you need to use absolute URLs.
Listing the sizes separately allows the device to download only the smallest image that meets it's needs. For the "shortcut icon", you can't list different sizes, but you can use an ICO file which may contain multiple sizes encoded in the file. Many image programs like GIMP can save ICO files with multiple sizes.
Note that if you want the shortcut icon to display in IE, it must be a real ico file.
Apparently, Android versions 2.1 and earlier only recognize the "precomposed" image link, but if you include the precomposed icon, every device that is capable of "fancifying" icons will skip their process and just use the precomposed ones. The Androids I tested can do their own fancifying, so I don't use precomposed icon links. It will depend on your compatibility needs.
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="http://yourdomain.com/custom_icon.png"/>
For more information about using home screen icons...
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/ConfiguringWebApplications/ConfiguringWebApplications.html

Android and iOS seem to use the same references for the icons on the home screen.
For the HTML link icons:
<!-- These two are what you want to use by default -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png">
<!-- This one works for anything below iOS 4.2 -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed apple-touch-icon" href="apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png">
The difference between the two types are that the top two don't have a space. The bottom one includes both with a space in between. The space is not recognized by iOS 4.2+. Your best bet is to use all three. If you are limited on space, use only the top two.
For Sizes:
144 × 144 pixels for an iPad Retina display.
114 × 114 pixels for an iPhone Retina display.
57 × 57 pixels for almost anything else
One thing to watch out for is that iOS 4.2+ will simply ignore the size attribute, so you can just link them with out it. I'd suggest putting the size within the icon's file name just for organizational purposes.
Another thing to note is that you don't even need to include the links for the "apple-touch-icon"s. If there is no icons defined in the html, iOS will search through the root folder for files named the following in order. Android DOES need them defined, so put them in the code anyways.
apple-touch-icon-57x57-precomposed.png
apple-touch-icon-57x57.png
apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png
apple-touch-icon.png

This looks like a good explanation.
It would appear that if you place:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/some.png"/>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/custom_icon.png"/>
In the bookmarked page's HTML, it will appear on the desktop automagically.

This Android and iPhone icon page suggests absolute URLs for Android.
So just amend KenY-N's tags to
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://yourdomain.com/path/to/some.png"/>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="http://yourdomain.com/custom_icon.png"/>

I can confirm it works using relative (and absolute was working for me too)... but clearing caching solved what issues i was having... sample lines i used:
<!-- fj Icon for Android Chrome shortcut etc-->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/static/main/img/m3magnet-full.png">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/static/main/img/m3magnet-full.png">

this is what worked for me. Chrome on Android:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="favicon.png" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" />
<link
rel="apple-touch-icon"
sizes="64x64"
href="http://glatocha.com/bmr/favicon.png"
/>
<link
rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed"
href="http://glatocha.com/bmr/favicon.png"
/>

Mobile style sheet - only loads on refresh?

i have the following css calls:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="htlibery/desk_coupon_style.css" type="text/css"/>
<link media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" href="htlibery/mobile_coupon_style.css" type= "text/css" rel="stylesheet">
When viewing on iphone this serves the correct style sheet.
When on my samsung android (captivate) it serves the desktop version)
If i hit refresh the correct style sheet is then served.
any ideas...
If no ideas, what is the best method to auto refresh on page load?
Thanks

So Far I have found this (From paste bin) to work best..
<!-- Mobile device detection by Bushido Designs: BushidoDesigns.net -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mobile.css" />
see note: <style type="text/css" media="screen and (min-width: 481px)"
<!--
#import url("screen.css");
-->
</style>
<link href="mobile.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld, only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" />
I will update after further testing..