> desktop sites are now the default in Safari
Surely it's not some kind of meddling with the device width to make responsive web design even more confusing. That would be very odd.
My hope is that it's some kind of user agent manipulation that thwarts device sniffing so you don't see a mobile phone stylesheet or get redirected to a mobile site while using your iPad.
I don't have the betas, but I expect Apple is applying this automatically based on viewport size. Full screen Safari instance? Desktop page. Narrow viewport in split or slide-over multitasking? Mobile page.
Wow. I've somehow missed this little gem. I usually requested the desktop site via the share sheet option but this is far nicer. Ditto for a quick way to disable content blockers. Thanks!
To your point about request desktop site being in the share sheet, that's true. But recently closed tabs are not.
Advanced iOS features are definitely less discoverable. But it's a trade-off for how easy the essentials are.
(Hopefully I can remember this tip next time I suddenly realize I have 200+ tabs.)
On the desktop-only site side, it looks like Apple has also done some interaction refinements for problems touch-based users can hit on these sites, especially around distinct hover vs. click interactions, the need to "tap-twice" to essentially "focus then click", etc.
All of the "evergreen" browsers have a mobile design view built into their dev tools these days. You can enable that, switch between specific device screen profiles, and continuously drag the "screen size" handles to watch your site's behavior at different sizes. This is great for development, since your web inspector view stays at full size.
Combining CSS media queries with CSS flexbox is a hugely powerful way customize the end-user experience for different devices. Flexbox not only makes basic layout adaptations straightforward (or free!), it lets you handle some otherwise tricky cases using tools like reordering support.
It's probably also worth searching for "mobile first web design" for further resources.
But go to icab mobile, set user agent to desktop, and the sites load and work perfectly.