narvik

Is there a direct link to access the desktop version of united.com from a phone without going through the mobile or app version?

IADFlyer123

IF you have Chrome browser on your phone, it is as easy as opening the Chrome Menu and checking "Request Desktop Site". It will open up the desktop version.

UAX_Brasilia

Or on Safari by clicking and holding the page refresh button.

ekwang

There is no way to directly get to the desktop site from a mobile device without some user intervention as web developers mostly have sites optimized for mobile devices and will automatically send you to that site if you are detected to be requesting the site from such a device.

docbert

This depends entirely on the site. For example, before the redesign you could force united.com to give you the full site by adding ?full=1 to the URL. (I might be off on the name - but the functionality certainly existed). I'm not aware of something similar for the current site, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

drewguy

My real frustration is that accessing the full site through these techniques isn't sticky - often as soon as you load a new page via a link you get the mobile version.

JAaronT

United.com is a responsive site so there isn't really a mobile version any more. It just moves things around based on screen size. I have noticed that a few things get lost in the shuffle though but on a phone it's pretty comprehensive now.

ekwang

If I am correct, as I remember from my days of selling companies external performance monitoring services, the browser identifies the individual making the site request via user string, which among other things tells the site your OS, browser type and platform, all of which would determine whether you are directed to the mobile site or full desktop site.

docbert

Getting a bit off the forum topic, but...

What you've described is how it used to be done. The browser sends a "User Agent" string that identifies it as a mobile browser, and the website would then either return a mobile-formatted site, or redirect to a completely different mobile site. United used to do the latter here - it would redirect to mobile.united.com, unless you passed the "?full=1" option I mentioned in which case it would not do that redirect and you'd get the full desktop site.

However as JAaronT said above, "United.com is a responsive site so there isn't really a mobile version any more.". What that means is that the website itself (the html and the javascript, rather than the webserver behind it) "responds" to the environment and is rendered differently depending on characteristics of the device. The easiest way to see this is to go to united.com on your desktop in a standard browser window - you'll get the desktop site. But then make your browser window narrower, down to a few hundred pixels wide, and you'll suddenly be viewing the 'mobile' site. The browser didn't re-load anything as you changed the width, it simply rendered the existing page differently (which might actually mean it needs to load some new content such as different images, but fundamentally it's the same page)

Thus, as JAaronT said, there isn't a mobile version of the website any more. There is just a rendering that is used when you are on a web browser with a narrow window - regardless of whether that's on a mobile device, a desktop, or anything else. If you select the "Desktop site" option in your mobile web browser it'll lie to the website and tell it that it's a much wider screen so that the website renders as if it was on a desktop (and then normally scale it so it still fits on the small screen, and/or give you scroll bars).