>are you sure you don't have your text size defaulted to small, or something?
There is no text sizing option in the Safari prefs on the iPhone. Only for the Mail app. I just tried changing that and did indeed change the font size in Mail (I had it as Small) to a size that was unnecessarily large. But no difference made in Safari.
I can take a screenshot and upload it, if you wish, or if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
>The zooming causing side-scrolls is an iPhone bug
Mmm... I can see your point of view... But explain to me what happens on a normal (not a cut down mobile version) HTML page that is quite busy. Say like THESUN.CO.UK on the Android. Are you saying that if you zoom in, all the text gets bigger AND wraps to your screen size? I can't imagine how that would work??? From my point of view, the iPhone works as I expect it to. *shrug*
>Unless there's some metatag that instructs mobile Safari to hide it, but that doesn't make sense.
Correct, there is. Well, I think so, anyway. Basically, you can load a page (even if it is a long one) normally which keeps the address bar in view, or with some fancy coding, you can make the "start point" of the view window of the page to not include the address bar height, assuming the page is long enough.
To see what I mean, for the iPhone users out there (and would be interested what the Androiders see as well :)) go to this address, which is on my company's website:
http://www.xclusive.com.au/!phone/iNdex.asp
It is still under development so you will get errors unless you try ONLY the following:
Home Page - Notice how all clickables are finger friendly.
Scroll to bottom and enter "Eye Candy" in nicely sized search box and then click on the nicely sized search button. :)
Again, notice address bar sliding away, and links to products being nicely spread out for finger-friendly clicking.
Click on one of the products.
Notice the size of the picture and fonts - All sized to be immediately readable, not too small, not too large, and only need vertical scrolling to get to it all, if needed.
Not sure if mobile banking is as popular in the UK as it is here, but give this site a go on your mobile device: www.anz.com
I consider this my "reference site" for mobile development. Very easy to navigate, big finger friendly clickables. Slides away the address bar. Nice colouring and contouring. Properly sized text without zooming or side-scrolling. Just perfect.
And no, my iPhone is not broken. :)
Cheers,
Mark