Custom Desktop User Agent String for Android's Dolphin HD

Ever want to view websites in their Full Desktop display mode? How about watch The Daily Show or Colbert Report on your Android device? Comedy Central is an example of a site that automatically switches to their Mobile site, which doesn't allow viewing full episodes. We want full episodes because our Android hardware is fully capable of viewing full Desktop sites including Adobe Flash content. In this post, we'll go over how to view all websites in full Desktop mode on Dolphin HD Browser.

When we visit a website, our web browser's User Agent lets a website know the capabilities of our browser. Then the website serves up the page in a readable format suitable for our device whether it be on a PC, Mac, Android, or iPhone. The problem with Dolphin HD is that it's built in User Agent still shows Android in the User Agent String, so some sites we visit still serve up their Mobile site.

To fix this, we're going to paste in our own Custom User Agent String:

Go to More => Settings => Dolphin Settings => User Agent => Custom

Then Copy and Paste the following User Agent

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:8.0.1)

Then go to Data Storage Settings => Clear data

Check Clear cache
Check Clear history
Check Clear all cookie data

Press OK

Exit out of Dolphin HD

Open up Dolphin HD, and now any site you visit will display in full Desktop Mode.

If you're curious what the User Agent String above means, then this is what websites see when you visit:

Mozilla/5.0	Web Browser
Windows NT 6.1	Operating System	Windows 7
WOW64	Web Browser	32-bit Internet Explorer running on 64-bit Windows
AppleWebKit/535.7	Rendering Engine	WebKit Rendering Engine
KHTML, like Gecko		Apple WebKit is based on KDE KHTML
Chrome/16.0.912.63	Web Browser	Google Chrome Browser

Enjoy

1and1 Webspace Explorer Error

Looks like 1and1 just recently changed their "1and1 Control Panel" interface. Probably, many were used to using Internet Explorer with "1and1 Webspace Explorer" because it was compatible, before the 1and1 interface change, whereas Google Chrome was not. As of 5/15/11, when attempting to use Webspace Explorer with Internet Explorer 9, commands clicked end up with an error being displayed.

The fix would be to switch to another browser like Google Chrome, which is faster anyway and more secure. You could try Firefox or Opera, but I haven't personally tested those browsers. For me, I will continue to develop in Dreamweaver, test in multiple browsers, and use Google Chrome for any 1and1 Webspace Explorer interactions.

Firefox 3.6.X & Vmware SSL/https Fix

Thanks to Alan Doyle on the mozilla forums for this fix:

1. Open up Firefox
2. Type in the address bar: about:config
3. Type in the filter bar: ssl2
4. Double click on security.enable_ssl2 to change the value from False to True

Now you should be able to log into https://localhost:8333
 
Vmware Console on the other hand will not work with Firefox 3.6.X. Therefore, if you're on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid, you will need to access Vmware remotely via another computer on your network. If you're using anything below Ubuntu 9.10, then downgrade Firefox 3.6.X to 3.5.8, and Vmware Console will be okay.