[derefr]

FYI: the pinch-to-zoom gesture from mobile browsers (from before websites were mobile-responsive) has also long been implemented for all modern desktop browsers. It's viewport zoom, which is far better than the font-scaling zoom you get by pressing Cmd-+, and makes this site easily readable.

(The much-less-well-known mobile double-tap-on-text gesture [it zooms-to-fit whatever element you tapped on to the width of the viewport] was also ported to desktop browsers. Though, on desktop with a touchpad, it's a two-finger double-tap — which I don't think anyone would ever even think to try.)

[LocalPCGuy]

FWIW, most browsers by default now do a viewport zoom with Ctrl/Cmd-+ rather than a font-scaling zoom. I think browsers generally have the option to change that, so if you prefer the former but it's doing the latter, may check the browser settings.

[BobaFloutist]

Double tap on text highlights it for me. Is that an Iphone/android thing or what?

[derefr]

As I said, it's a two finger double-tap.

But also, under further investigation — and unlike with pinch-to-zoom — desktop support for the two-finger double-tap gesture seems to be specific to macOS. (Which is weird, because Chrome has support for arbitrary multitouch gesture processing to enable the JS multitouch API. So you'd think Chrome's support for "the multitouch gestures the OS expects" would be built on top of that generic multitouch recognizer [and therefore working everywhere that recognizer works], instead of expecting the OS to pre-recognize specific gestures and translate them to specific OS input events.)

[BobaFloutist]

I was trying on my phone, but my laptop seems to interpret it as a right click. Which, frankly, makes sense.

[antonvs]

On my iPad in Safari and Pixel Android phone in Firefox, one-finger double tap on text does the fit to viewport.

On my Ubuntu laptop in Chrome, I couldn’t find a way to make it work - even tapping the touchscreen didn’t work. But I’m not using the stock Ubuntu GUI, so it could be that (LXqt+XMonad).

[BobaFloutist]

>Pixel Android phone in Firefox, one-finger double tap on text does the fit to viewport.

I'm very confused, can you clarify what makes this different from the gesture that highlights text?

Edit: it appears that "request desktop site" makes it fit the viewport, whereas using the mobile view it's I guess already fitting the viewport so it highlights the text. The strange thing is in the desktop view, if I pinch zoom after fitting the viewport and do it again, it zooms out, whereas the mobile view still highlights the text. Which kinda makes sense, since mobile view it's fairly likely that you zoomed in to highlight the text more accurately, though it's weird that it's so inconsistent.

[antonvs]

On both my iPad and Android, to highlight text I press and hold. I can't find a way to make double-tap do that.

[BobaFloutist]

Are you using Chrome or Firefox, on Android?