Degraded version of mobile.twitter.com with the default UA

This is not "plain html", this is rather a degraded version that twitter.com serves us based on the user-agent string.
Let’s use the UA override mechanism to send it a UA string that will get us shiny touch content.

Compared to mobile.twitter.com in Chrome on Android, the version we’re getting on Ubuntu Touch is indeed less shiny, however it seems to be fully functional. The problem with impersonating Android is that we will get intrusive popups offering to install the Android application.

This version is functional but not usable for a touch experience, the links are too small.

The following User-Agent string override gets us the desired result:

    "twitter.com": ["Mobile", "Android 4; Mobile"],

However, this means we’re also getting popups in-app suggesting installing the native android application :/
See attached screenshot.
In the end, it’s a trade-off between usability and communication. And of course, we should get in touch with the guys at twitter to do some evangelism and convince them that our default UA string is a good candidate for modern, touch-enabled content.

and if you are not logged you get this big thing that invites you to download the app for both Android & iphone

It appears that Canonical is in discussions with Twitter and the plan is to enable our default UA string on their servers in order to send us modern, touch-enabled content.

Until then, we’ll have to live with the degraded version we’re currently getting.

>>The following User-Agent string override gets us the desired result:

>> "twitter.com": ["Mobile", "Android 4; Mobile"],

>>However, this means we’re also getting popups in-app suggesting installing the native android application :/
>>See attached screenshot.
>>In the end, it’s a trade-off between usability and communication. And of course, we should get in touch with the guys at twitter to >>do some evangelism and convince them that our default UA string is a good candidate for modern, touch-enabled content.

Lets make this change please. We're using Android string for other sites as well. In parallel we can work with Twitter on having them support our default UA String.

Fix committed into lp:webbrowser-app at revision 368, scheduled for release in webbrowser-app, milestone ubuntu-13.04-month-5

Just want to let you know that twitter serves the right version for FF OS without any ads for other platforms, twitter will look for the string "Firefox", here is the override rule :

"twitter.com": ["Mobile", "Mobile) Firefox"],

Very good point, thanks Adnane for the suggestion. The override has to be ["Mobile)", "Mobile) Firefox"] for it to work though.

Fix committed into lp:webbrowser-app at revision 374, scheduled for release in webbrowser-app, milestone ubuntu-13.04-month-5

This bug was fixed in the package webbrowser-app - 0.22+13.10.20131007.2-0ubuntu1

---------------
webbrowser-app (0.22+13.10.20131007.2-0ubuntu1) saucy; urgency=low

  [ Alexandre Abreu ]
  * Handle URL open requests and expose a org.freedesktop.Application
    interface on DBUS. (LP: #1230404)

  [ David Barth ]
  * UA overrides for google domains, youtube, twitter. Also
    login.ubuntu.com. (LP: #1233270)

  [ Olivier Tilloy ]
  * Hide the activity view when validating the address bar. (LP:
    #1234843)
  * Reverted revision 343: now all domains expand consistently in the
    activity view, even if they contain only one entry. (LP: #1235137)
  * Better UA override rule for mobile twitter (don’t pretend to be an
    android). Thanks Adnane Belmadiaf for the tip!. (LP: #1233270)
  * Fix the height of the webview container when in landscape
    orientation. (LP: #1235328, #1234949)

  [ Ubuntu daily release ]
  * Automatic snapshot from revision 376
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Mon, 07 Oct 2013 21:30:43 +0000