Some tech-savvy sites have already formatted their web pages to detect Android browsers and offer up a special version of their pages that have bigger type and fewer columns, in order to be more friendly to small phone screens. Most sites, however, treat Android's browser like any other browser, and present a full page when you visit.
Head to the New York Times' main page on the same day, and you get this:
New York Times site not modified for small screens
Zoom with the Magnify Button
You can mostly read the headlines and get an idea of the pictures, but, man, that's tiny type. Android offers two solutions for dealing with this. On every phone, there are two magnifying buttons that appear in the lower-right corner as soon as you move the page a teensy bit with your thumb. They increase the size of everything on the page—text, pictures, borders, the whole deal. As you zoom in, the browser will shift things around and try to adjust the columns of text so they neatly fit the margins of your screen, usually with
slightly different address. Opening m.nytimes.com or mobile.nytimes.com brings up a universally smaller-scale Times, and the same URL change works for most sites, too. If not, try something akin to nytimes.com/m.
On newer Android models, Android has adopted the same finger controls that Apple pioneered with its iPhone. To zoom in on a particular focus point on the page, place two fingers over the point, then spread them apart from that point. Note the green box in the thick-fingered illustration here—it's the same picture outlined in green in both slides, but in the right-side example, I've pulled my fingers apart.
Zooming in on a particular focus point.
Think of it like operating a camera lens that focuses as you twist or raise it, or having a thin layer of Silly Putty over your screen that stretches the text as you stretch it—with better results, obviously, than you probably remember from your childhood newspaper blotting. To zoom back out again, place two fingers in separate spots on the screen, then bring them together in a "pinch," the opposite of the zoom motion.
More useful for reading is the specific column sizing you can do with your fingers for pages with a good deal of text. Click on an article headline at the New York Times, and you'll arrive at an article that's formatted for a standard browser:
eyes. Tap twice anywhere inside the main text column, or on an image, and the browser will reformat the column margins and word flow to better fit that text or picture.
Reformatted view after a double tap of the text you want to read.
Better. But let's say you want really big text, or text of a very specific size, so that the pictures don't smoosh the words to any side and you feel like your phone is simply a portal to a page of text. Go ahead and use those two-finger spread and pinch motions to get the text exactly the size you want it, then double-tap it again again with your finger. You could also use the magnifying buttons that continue to appear in the lower-right, but your fingers give you more fine control.
Further Zoom of the text
And there you have it—the perfect view for those Sunday mornings where you don't want to get out of bed, so you reach for your phone, dial up the news, and read it right there, because you're too cheap to shell out for the paper and too lazy to get up just yet and feed the cats. Or so I've heard.
Bookmarks
Back to the browser and all its buttons. What's that ribbon-with-a-star icon to the right of the URL bar? That's the Bookmarks icon, also reachable from the Menu button. Go ahead and click it.
Bookmarks Tab
Your main Bookmarks tab is where you'll see, well, your bookmarks. On a just-out-of-the- box phone, you'll probably have a host of pre-loaded bookmarks for popular sites and services—the New York Times, ESPN, and the like. If you've got a whole lot of
bookmarks, it might be convenient to hit the Menu button and choose List View for a text- only scroll. Keep your pre-loaded bookmarks if you'd like, or press and hold on a
bookmark to pull out the menu so you can delete it. Note that pressing and holding on a bookmark also lets you edit its name and address, add it as a direct shortcut to your home screen, and copy or "Share" a bookmark.
Want to change your home page? This is where you do it, by pressing and holding a bookmark and choosing that option. Want to add a bookmark? Navigate to the page you'd like to add, press the Bookmarks button, then choose the top-left box with the star, and "Add" text.
Hit the Stars on the Right to Create Bookmarks
Your other two tabs, Most Viewed and History, work in the same basic way as your bookmarks, and the press-and-hold commands are the same. The main difference is that your recent and most-visited pages aren't yet bookmarks, but you can make them bookmarks by clicking the star icon to the right of each.