title: What's the point of 'meta viewport user-scalable=no' in the Google Maps API
body: <p>I'm using the Google Maps JavaScript API V3 and <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/tutorial.html#HelloWorld" rel="noreferrer">the official examples</a> always have you include this meta tag:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-html prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Most of the 3rd-party examples I've seen also do it. I wrote a plugin using it, though, and one of my users <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-basic-google-maps-placemarks-meta-viewport-set-to-non-scaling?replies=2" rel="noreferrer">told me it's preventing him from being able to zoom in and out on his mobile device</a>. I don't have a mobile device to test with, and none of my searches revealed any helpful information.</p>
  
  <p>So, what's the point of the tag? Should I leave it in? Should I try to detect the browser agent and only show it for desktop browsers?</p>
  
  <p>If you want to examine the plugin, you can <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/basic-google-maps-placemarks/" rel="noreferrer">download it</a>, <a href="http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/basic-google-maps-placemarks/tags/1.1.2/" rel="noreferrer">browse the source</a> or <a href="http://washingtonhousechurches.net/" rel="noreferrer">see a live example</a>.</p>