Responsive Websites Issue

[DePalmo]

Hello.

First I must thank you for offering great service. I like it a lot but I'm having some issues with responsive websites.

You're offering a setting of &screen with various options, but it looks like that they don't have any effect with responsive websites, I always get back a "mobile" website and not a full desktop site.

Example:
http://api.webthumbnail.org/?width=500&height=400&screen=1280&url=http://www.kotest.eu
returns:

Now, please view the site http://www.kotest.eu by visiting it, you will notice that the site is completely different from the thumbnail generated. The same result happens no matter on what screen I define.

It also happens the same with other responsive websites, for instance:

• news.yahoo.com
• news.google.com (this one is even in foreign language, but that's not your fault)
• probably others, didn't check them.

Any recommendation on how to solve this issue?

[cepa]

Hi,

currently the &screen parameter is ignored, some time ago rendering engine was changed and I didnt have time to fix this one ;)

I will test if enabling &screen fixes the problem with responsive design and then once its deployed on production the images will be fixed within 7 days (current refresh rate).

thx

[DePalmo]

Great :)

Can you please drop a line if the tests will be successful and you will leave &screen enabled?

Thank you.

[cepa]

sure, will do

[cepa]

Btw, when i think about this, perhaps the user agent is an issue too? Webthumbnail robots sends a custom one, and the mobile layout might be visible because webapp doesnt recognize sent useragent as a valid desktop browser.

[DePalmo]

Can't say for other sites, but my site specific (www.kotest.eu, and any other from my development) doesn't use browser/user agent to determine screen resolution/width, it uses CSS @media queries based on window width, not on screen width or user agent.

Most sites (I believe, can't confirm that) probably use the same technique, because it's easier. It would be a lot of work to set a responsive style sheets per user agent (there's just too many of them out there).