Quick Tip: switching between mobile and desktop views on Blogspot

The blog hosting platform Blogger, owned by Google, hosts many official Google company blogs and even more third-party blogs maintained by companies and individuals on the blogspot.com domain.
While it may not seem like it, Google is still pushing out updates to the platform to improve its capabilities. Blogger is certainly not the main focus of company activities but it is a a product used widely by the company.
When you open a blog hosted on Blogger, it may be opened in regular or mobile view. All blogspot blogs are optimized for mobile usage and if the client connecting to the blog is detected as mobile, the mobile version is loaded automatically.
If you are a webmaster, SEO or work in Internet marketing you know that Google launched an upgrade to its search algorithm recently that improves the visibility of mobile optimized content in the company's search engine.
Anyway, if you check the url of the address when you are connected to a page's mobile version, you will notice that it is controlled by a url parameter.
The url of the most recent article on the official Gmail blog for instance about Google Inbox being available to all users looks like this in the mobile optimized version: http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2015/05/thanks-to-you-inbox-by-gmail-is-now.html?m=1
As you can see, the only parameter available is m=1 which forces the server to deliver the mobile version of that page.
To load the desktop version instead, simply remove ?m=1 from the url to do so. You may also switch from the desktop version of a blog post on Blogspot to the mobile version by adding the parameter. If it is a page, simply add ?m=1 to the url and reload the page to do that. On the homepage, you need to make sure that the parameter is added after a trailing slash, e.g. http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/?m=1
The parameter is honored on all pages of the site. When you switch to another page, it too is loaded in the mobile version if you have added the m=1 parameter. Since options to switch from the mobile version to the desktop version or vice versa are not displayed on Blogspot, using the parameter is the only option you have to make that switch.
But why would you want to switch between a site's mobile and desktop version? It may make sense of the site detected your device type incorrectly. Maybe you got the desktop version on a mobile device or vice versa. Or, maybe you prefer the mobile version as it does away with the sidebar and other distractions so that you can concentrate fully on the content. Last but not least, you may find the mobile version more eye-pleasing than the regular version on Blogspot.

Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.