September 20, 2012

Disable mobile browsing view in SharePoint

The default mobile browsing interface for SharePoint is awful for mobile navigation.  To preview, add "?mobile=1" to the end of your sharepoint URL (i.e., http://sharepoint/default.aspx?mobile=1).  Not very usable... left navigation is gone and only webparts that are enabled appear.  Images are not scaled down, and if you want to setup webparts specifically for mobile access, they're also visible to desktop users.

Instead of even looking into custom building a mobile interface for SharePoint, I found Randy's blog entry explaining how to change it so mobile devices use the same interface as desktop users.  I've summarized the steps I took here:

  1. Navigate to a folder in the virtual directory of your site which is something like [Drive]:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[Site ID as found in IIS]\App_Browsers.  If you can't find it, open IIS and check the virtual directory location.
  2. Make a backup copy of the compat.browser file then open with notepad or other text-based editing tool.
  3. Locate <capability name="isMobileDevice"  value="true" /> and change it to false.  There are several entries for various mobile devices... so many changes to make.
  4. Restart the site within IIS.  Performing an IISReset.exe is not necessary.