Side Effects of Removing "Width=Device-Width" from Viewport Meta Tag When "Initial-Scale=1.0" Is Also Set

Side effects of removing width=device-width from viewport meta tag when initial-scale=1.0 is also set

Before we delve into what you're asking, let's review a little about why the viewport meta tag exists in the first place. Here's what I've gathered.

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Why do we need the viewport tag?

A viewport is an area where the web content can be seen. Usually, the rendered page (web content) is bigger than the viewport. As a result, we usually use scrollbars to see the hidden content (because the viewport can't display everything). Quoted from CSS Device Adaptation Module Level 1:

The narrow viewport is a problem for documents designed to look good
in desktop browsers. The result is that mobile browser vendors use a
fixed initial containing block size that is different from the
viewport size, and close to that of a typical desktop browser window.
In addition to scrolling or panning, zooming is often used to change
between an overview of the document and zoom in on particular areas of
the document to read and interact with.

In mobile devices (and other smaller devices), the initial containing block is usually larger than the viewport. For example, a mobile device that has a screen width of 640px might have an initial containing block of 980px. In this case, the initial containing block is shrunk to 640px so that it can be fit into the mobile screen. This 640px width (screen width) is what is called initial-width of the viewport which will be pertinent to our discussion.

So.... Why do we need this viewport tag? Well, nowadays, we have media queries which allows us to design for mobile devices. However, this media query depends on the actual viewport's width. In mobile devices, the user agent automatically styles the initial viewport size to a different fixed one (usually larger than the initial viewport size). So if the viewport's width of a mobile device is fixed, the CSS rules we use in media queries won't be executed simply because the viewport's width never changes. Using the viewport tag, we can control the actual viewport's width (after being styled by the UA). Quoted from MDN:

However, this mechanism is not so good for pages that are optimized for narrow screens using media queries — if the virtual viewport is 980px for example, media queries that kick in at 640px or 480px or less will never be used, limiting the effectiveness of such responsive design techniques.

Note that the viewport tag can change the actual viewport's height too, not just the width

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viewport tag's width

The width in a viewport tag is translated to max-width in the @viewport rule. When you declare the width as device-width, it is translated to 100% in the @viewport rule. Percentage value is resolved based on the initial-width of the viewport. So if we're still using the above example, the max-width will resolve to a value of 640px. As you've found out, this only specifies the max-width. The min-width will automatically be extend-to-zoom.

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extend-to-zoom

Your question was what exactly is the value of extend-to-zoom? From what I've gathered, it's the value that's used to support the viewport extending itself to fit the viewing area at a given zoom level. In other words, it's a viewport size value that changes based on the zooming value specified. An example? Given that the max-zoom value of the UA stylesheet is 5.0 and the initial-width is 320px, <meta name="viewport" content="width=10"> will resolve to an initial actual width of 64px. This makes sense because if a device only has 320px and can only be zoomed 5x the normal value, then the minimum viewport size would be 320px divided by 5, which means showing only 64px at a time (and not 10px because that would require zooming 32x!). This value will be used by the algorithm to determine how to extend (change) the min-width and max-width values, which will play a role in determining the actual viewport width.

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Putting it all together

So essentially, what's the difference between <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> and <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0">? Simply redo the steps of the algorithm (this and this). Let's do the latter (the one without width attribute) first. (We will assume that the initial-width of the viewport is 640px.)

• width is not set, this results in max-width and min-width being extend-to-zoom in the @viewport rule.
• initial-scale is 1.0. This means that the zoom value is also 1.0
• Let's resolve extend-to-zoom. Steps:
  
  
  1. extend-zoom = MIN(zoom, max-zoom). The MIN operation resolves to the value that is non-auto. Here, zoom is 1.0 and max-zoom is auto. This means that extend-zoom is 1.0
  2. extend-width = initial-width / extend-zoom. This is easy; divide 640 by 1. You get extend-width is equal to 640
  3. Because extend-zoom is non-auto, we will skip to the second conditional. max-width is indeed extend-to-zoom, this means that max-width will be set to extend-width. Thus, max-width = 640
  4. min-width is also extend-to-zoom, this means setting min-width to max-width. We get min-width = 640
• After resolving the non-auto (i.e. the extend-to-zoom) values for max-width and min-width. We can proceed to the next procedure. Because min-width or max-width is not auto, we will use the first if in the procedure, thus setting the initial actual viewport width to MAX(min-width, MIN(max-width, initial-width)), which equates to MAX(640, MIN(640, 640)). This resolves to 640 for your initial actual viewport width
• Moving on to the next procedure. In this step, width is not auto. The value isn't changed and we end up with the actual viewport width of 640px

Let's do the former.

• width is set, this results in max-width being 100% (640px in our case) and min-width being extend-to-zoom in the @viewport rule.
• initial-scale is 1.0. This means that the zoom value is also 1.0
• Let's resolve extend-to-zoom. If you follow the steps carefully (almost the same as above), you will end up with a max-width of 640px and a min-width of 640px.
• You can probably see the pattern now. We will get the actual viewport width of 640px.

So what's the perceived difference? Essentially none. Both of them do the same thing. Hope my explanation helps ;-) If anything was amiss, do tell me.

Viewport width=device-width, initial-scale=1 not giving me full width

The problem is this <h1>, maybe you need to use another font-size to fix that:

What is initial scale, user-scalable, minimum-scale, maximum-scale attribute in meta tag?

They are viewport meta tags, and is most applicable on mobile browsers.

width=device-width

This means, we are telling to the browser “my website adapts to your device width”.

initial-scale

This defines the scale of the website, This parameter sets the initial zoom level, which means 1 CSS pixel is equal to 1 viewport pixel. This parameter help when you're changing orientation, or preventing default zooming. Without this parameter, responsive site won't work.

maximum-scale

Maximum-scale defines the maximum zoom. When you access the website, top priority is maximum-scale=1, and it won’t allow the user to zoom.

minimum-scale

Minimum-scale defines the minimum zoom. This works the same as above, but it defines the minimum scale. This is useful, when maximum-scale is large, and you want to set minimum-scale.

user-scalable

User-scalable assigned to 1.0 means the website is allowing the user to zoom in or zoom out.

But if you assign it to user-scalable=no, it means the website is not allowing the user to zoom in or zoom out.

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