When you visit a Web site on your mobile, your browser gives the site information about what browser, device and screen size you’re using — the user agent. The site can then provide an optimized version of the page that suits your device.

Unfortunately, this has led to a Web split in two:

1) Lightweight mobile sites that are easy to use, but don’t have all the functionality you need 2) Full desktop sites that feature a complete view of the site’s content, but are too big to be used on small devices (Homer Simpson had a similar problem, if in a more analog form).

Enter Phony. Phony solves some of the issues described above by letting you choose the user agent of your handset when you’re browsing with Firefox on your mobile. This way you can decide whether you want to see the lightweight mobile version of sites, or get the full desktop site that you can scroll around and have access to features that are normally only available when you browse the Web on your computer.

Phony will let you tell Firefox for mobile to render pages as if it were Firefox on the desktop, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or the native browser on Android phones,  iPhone, iPad, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

To get Phony on Firefox for mobile, open the add-ons manager and select it from the list of recommended add-ons below. Once you’ve installed Phony (you don’t even have to restart Firefox), open the preferences tab (by sweeping your finger from right to left on any page) and select ‘User Agent’ to change your settings. Then simply reload and the page will render the way you want it to. This gives you the best of both worlds. You can even update your user agent on the fly.

Find out more about Phony here. Or check out some of the other mobile add-ons recommended by Mozilla.

Dan Horner - Product Marketing Manager for add-ons @ Mozilla See all posts by Dan Horner.