When a user browses a website on their browser, the browser of that platform will tell the server what kind of browser they are so that the server will know whether or not to deliver a website for mobile or a website for desktop. There are plenty of mobile-optimized websites these days, although it seems that many of them are giving Internet Explorer for Windows Phone a hard time.
What this means is that sometimes websites don’t render correctly or properly on Windows Phone, leading to a less than ideal browsing experience. According to recent reports, this has essentially forced Microsoft to make their Windows Phone user-agent identifier as Apple’s iPhone Safari browser.
Given that iOS and Android are currently the dominating smartphone platforms, we guess most web designers focus more on those platforms rather than those running on Windows Phone. In any case this means that Windows Phone users should be able to expect more mobile-friendly websites being delivered on their phones.
Now presumably this is not a long-term solution for Microsoft. After all we’re sure that it is also a matter of pride. We’re not sure what Microsoft can do to address this, but for now it looks like they will have to rely on faking being Safari.
Filed in . Read more about iOS, Safari and Windows Phone.