I used to use Flightaware multiple times a day to check for arrivals into selected airports, and view their corresponding photos. Not possible anymore.
I had 17 bookmarks saved in a folder on my device. One click and I was instantly on the page I wanted (the full, classic site for my selected airport).
When the newest mobile display format was implemented about a year ago - it forced my non-mobile bookmarks to be displayed in mobile format.
Once the mobile format is displayed on my device, I have to go back to the main menu at the top of the site and select “switch to the non-mobile version of FlightAware”. But that takes me to your home page, not to any of the bookmarks I have saved. I must enter the airport code in and start over again.
The mobile version lacks the specific features I use. Where are the italics vs. non-italics indicating whether a flight has actually departed? If I click on a tail number, where is the photo of the aircraft I am tracking?
What I don’t want: to be forced onto a mobile page.
What I do want: a URL format that I can use & save, which will take me to a specific airport in classic/desktop format. Something like: flightaware.com/live/airport/KIAD/NO-MOBILE
Once you choose the non-mobile version from the mobile homepage, the non-mobile setting sticks until you delete cookies (or possibly logout).
All your bookmarks should bring up the non-mobile version of the page on the same mobile device after you’ve selected non-mobile.
Can you post the contents of flightaware.com/fix from your mobile device? Then I can have a developer look into it.
Your browser is Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B329 Safari/8536.25
You are using a mobile device (iphone) (touchscreen) (color)
You may be behind a proxy
x_forwarded_for: 68.50.30.xxx
Your public IP address is 68.50.30.xxx
You are not logged in.
You do not have a session id
You can accept cookies from FlightAware
You have never successfully logged in to FlightAware from this computer and browser
You have never chosen a language (locale).
No default locale detected.
Your region is US US/en_US
Your javascript is working fine.
Time (zulu) is Monday, 22-Apr-2013 19:26:32 GMT
JavaScript system clock: Mon Apr 22 2013 15:26:32 GMT-0400 (EDT)
JavaScript timezone offset: 240 minutes (4 hours)
Your account can view 14 days of flight history
Actuallly - the line that says “You have never successfully logged in to FlightAware from this computer and browser” is not correct. I’ve had this device for over a year and logged in multiple times from it.
Do you have “Private Browsing” turned on? To see, go to “Settings” from your homescreen, then choose “Safari.” The setting is under the “Privacy” category. The other setting that could be problematic is if “Accept Cookies” is set to “Never.” That is also under the “Privacy” category.
Either using private browsing and not accepting cookies would prevent the force desktop site cookie from sticking when you open a new window in Safari.
Pressed the menu icon in the upper left and chose “home”
Scrolled to the bottom of the mobile/home page and selected “Switch to the non-mobile version of FlightAware”
Non-mobile version of your home page appears.
Close that page.
Go back to the bookmark on my home screen and choose the same URL for KIAD
Mobile version re-appears.
Even if things had gone correctly at step #11, this is too much to go through to get to the page I want. At minimum, step #7 should direct me back to the page I was viewing - not your homepage.
I strongly encourage you to consider creating non-mobile URLs/shortcuts to make this process manageable.
A second option would be to have a “switch to the non-mobile” link at the bottom of every page that re-displays THAT page in non-mobile format. It’s the re-direct to the home page and starting all over that is the real hassle.
Thanks for all the detailed info. I think the missing piece is that your bookmarks are on the homescreen. Although I haven’t been able to replicate it, I’ve found other people online complaining about how homescreen bookmarks don’t maintain cookies properly, just as you are finding.
So the question is - if you bookmark an airport page inside Safari, instead of on the homescreen, does it work?
In either case, I will look into adding an optional “?force-desktop” flag to the url.
To address some of your specific concerns about the mobile site, we will also be implementing italics indicating departure, and we’ll be looking into possibly adding the aircraft photos to mobile flight pages.
