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CSS CSS Basics (2014) Enhancing the Design With CSS Adjusting the Layout with Media Queries

Posted by Megan Weber
Megan Weber
27,273 Points

Is initial-scale not needed?

Does <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> do the same thing as <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">?

1 Answer

Anwar Montasir
STAFF
Anwar Montasir
Treehouse Teacher
Anwar Montasir
Anwar Montasir
Treehouse Teacher

Hi Megan,

As of February 19, 2021, the MDN article Using the viewport meta tag to control layout on mobile browsers still recommends writing your viewport meta tag as 

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

You're using initial-scale=1 to fight the tendency by mobile browsers to automatically zoom out when encountering web layouts, a tendency that dates back to the initial launch of the iPhone. Back then, very few websites were mobile-optimized, so mobile browsers accounted for this by zooming out automatically. This behavior continues today since not all web pages are mobile-friendly.