Set meta viewport tag for Joomla 2.5

Question

I need to disable the ability of the mobile browsers to zoom in/out for one of the tabs of my main menu. I am running Joomla 2.5. I tried installing the Simple Mobile Detection extension , however this ruined all my tabs URLs. So is there any way to set the meta viewport tag in Joomla ?

Thank You.

Answer 1

You can do this using Joomla built in setMetaData function, like so:

$doc = JFactory::getDocument();
$doc->setMetaData('viewport', 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no');

This will set the scale to 100% (default) and disable the ability to zoom in

Answer 2

As @lodder answered you can set this meta to prevent zooming, and that is the correct way to do it, but you shouldn't do this.

Disabling native browser accessibility functions is a really bad idea, a clear ‘F%$K YOU!’ to your users. No-one needs to disable browser zoom.

Why not disable mouse clicks as well? Exactly. It's not very friendly to deliberately hobble a users device is it? If your design breaks when a user zooms, you should fix your design, not cripple standard user interactions.

Here's what the Accessibility Project has to say about this (mis)usage of the viewport meta: Never use maximum scale=1.

This quote, from an article by Brad Frost, puts a more human, and more direct, face on it I think:

Next time you find yourself intentionally depriving someone an experience—to acquire knowledge, to complete a task, to do something online that can make their life even just a little better—picture yourself standing in front of that person in real life, looking them square in the eyes, then firmly and definitively saying “Fuck you.”

Bottom line is some people rely on browser zoom, and even those that don't expect it to be there. Don't take that away please.