[Xoom General] ShinySideUpAZ:
Call it a flaw or a design feature, but at this time Google, in Gingerbread, has not given us a robust way to confidently browse in Full site desktop mode as they did with the Mobile View settings option in earlier versions of Android. You can root your device and permanently alter the User Agent string, but if you don't want to root you are left with the about:debug work around but that solution has flaws.

It requires the user to put the browser into debug mode.

It does not survive a browser restart.

Now there is some debate as to whether the browser restart issue is a design feature or a bug, but getting into these types of debates is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Until a permanent solution is found, there is another option. Use HTML switches to force the browser into full screen mode.

Most web sights that are aware of and serve platform specific content to mobile devices have a switch that can be used in the address to force a desktop presentation. Often this is not publicized or even visible through any direct link, but with a little digging you can work it out.

My web surfing patterns are not complex. Except the occasional random browsing, I seem to visit the same pages day after day. The trick is to find the switch required to force those mobile aware web sights to always serve you a desktop version.

I have 45 bookmarks set on my Xoom I only have problems with 10 of them, and have found solutions to 8. The holdouts are CNETTV and Chase

Starting in post #2 are the switches I have found that work for the sights I visit. I will continue to add to this list as I find others, or as others are provided to the thread in user posts. You'll find most web sights are not built from scratch from either native HTML, JAVA, VC++, C#, or asp, but are built from publishing packages like VBulletin which have common code conventions. As I find conventions that work, I use trial and error on a new problematic sight until I have found the right switch for that site.

Look at what has worked below and try to find others and share. . . . Happy Hunting.

P.S. if you're curious to what user agent string is being sent go to WhatsMyUserAgent. Here are the User Agent (UAString) returns reported by WhatsMyUserAgent on the Xoom by manipulation of the UAString selection within the Debug applet. Is "applet" what you call it in Android?

User Agent (UAString) when the browser is first loaded into memory:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 3.0.1; en-us; Xoom Build/HRI66) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.13

Android selected as the User Agent (UAString):

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 3.0.1; en-us; Xoom Build/HRI66) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/534.13

Desktop selected as the User Agent (UAString):

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/533.16

iPhone selected as the User Agent (UAString):

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7

iPad selected as the User Agent (UAString):

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10

Froyo-N1 selected as the User Agent (UAString):

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1