On mobile phones, most websites open differently than they are on PC. The "mobile" version of a site has a more compact and lighter graphics optimized for the small screen of a phone and which can be loaded more quickly and consuming less data traffic than the "desktop" version .
This site also looks slightly different when opened from a mobile phone, without a menu, with a slightly different layout that is easier for reading if viewed from an Android smartphone or iPhone.
Other popular sites, on the other hand, are very different when opened from a mobile phone instead of from a PC, among these, the most important ones are Facebook, which opens as the app from the mobile browser, and then online newspapers such as Corriere, Repubblica, Gazzetta, Sole 24 Ore and others that are much more limited and, in some cases, with paid mobile content.
When necessary, it is possible to force the desktop mode of a website on Android and iPhone, so as to open that site as if it were open from a PC, without limitations of any kind.
To open sites with the desktop version and not with the mobile version from Android and iPhone there are at least 3 ways.
1) Open a special address to see the desktop version and not the mobile version, if the site supports it.
This is the case of sites such as, for example, Facebook, which can be opened in desktop mode from any mobile phone, without having to change any settings, simply by using the address www.facebook.com/home.php?m2w.
Seeing Facebook in this way is not comfortable on a mobile phone because the writing is very small and must be enlarged by zooming with your fingers.
The advantage, however, is that by opening Facebook in this way you can write and send messages without the need to install Facebook Messenger and it is now the only possible way.
As written in another article, accessing Facebook from the site without using the app is much better even if the chat is blocked the same.
This trick, although not exactly comfortable, still allows you to access Facebook chat effortlessly.
2) Requesting the desktop version
Almost every smartphone browser has an option to request the desktop version of a website.
This feature can be found on Chrome and Firefox for Android and iPhone, from the options menu with three dots in the upper right corner.
Also in Safari on iPhone you can use the option that requires the desktop site by pressing the Share button.
The problem with this mode is that, for example, if you open a site like facebook.com from Android and iPhone, this detects that we are using a mobile phone and redirects navigation to the m.facebook.com site.
By requesting the desktop site, the m.facebook.com site will be reloaded, thus remaining in the mobile version and not in this desktop.
Therefore, it will be necessary to repeat the upload by accessing the website www.facebook.com.
There are many sites that use the redirect from the address with the www to m.address.com so this is not an effective way.
In addition, the desktop mode in Chrome, Firefox and Safari is only temporary and after closing the browser, reopening it returns to browsing in mobile mode.
3) Changing user agent
As already seen in another article, you can deactivate the mobile version of each site on your smartphone using Firefox with the User Agent Switcher extension, which works on both iPhone and Android.
Using Firefox with this extension installed it is possible to make the browser think that we are browsing from a PC and open any site without redirects and without ever seeing the mobile version.
This is the most effective way to open newspaper articles such as corriere.it, repubblica.it or gazzetta.it without having to pay anything.
