In a new post on the WebKit blog highlighting what’s new in Safari 27.1, Apple’s Jen Simmons said the company is exploring ways to allow websites to make better use of the iPhone Duo’s exterior screen. Here are the details. Apple knows that Safari is not making full use of the iPhone Duo’s exterior screen. One issue noted in multiple iPhone Duo reviews (including ours) was the fact that Safari’s right-aligned controls take up a significant portion of the limited exterior screen real estate, leaving websites with an unusually narrow area to display their content. Here’s what Chance Miller had to say about it in his review, published earlier this week: But the awkwardness of the iPhone’s 5.4-inch exterior screen shows up in Safari. The web is simply not optimized for this form factor. I’ll talk more about this later, but right-aligned controls on iPhone Duo eat up usable screen space in Safari especially.
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I can see why Apple chose the design it did for Safari on the iPhone Duo. I don’t think it would have made sense to overlay the controls with the website. Still, scrolling in Safari is one of the best examples of something that’s better on the inside screen. For new iPhone Duo users who have also been frustrated by this issue, Apple’s Jen Simmons shared some good news today. In a post highlighting what’s new in Safari 27.1, including how websites adapt to the iPhone Duo’s different screen sizes and folding positions, Simmons acknowledged that websites cannot currently extend behind controls on the device’s outer screen and said Apple is exploring ways to address that limitation. From your post: We’d like to give web designers and developers the ability to design and use that space in more creative ways. You may want to extend the header background to the full width of the screen, for example. It might seem like there is only one obvious way to make this possible, but in reality there are many possibilities. Simmons went on to explain that simply using the viewport HTML meta tag with viewport-fit=”cover” to extend websites behind Safari controls could cause problems, because many websites don’t properly account for those areas, potentially leaving important content hidden. Instead, he invited developers to share their ideas while Apple explores a better approach: We’re investigating whether there’s a better way to achieve the same result: something more foolproof and perhaps easier to use. If you have ideas, we’d love to hear them. And stay tuned. If you are a web developer and have ideas about how Apple could address this limitation, you can read the full WebKit post for details on how to share your feedback. Worth checking out on Amazon FTC – We use automatic affiliate links to generate income. Further.