Viewport issue, zoomed in on ipad when using device width - css

Question

I'm having an issue with how my site is being displayed on my ipad. I've tried to set the viewport to:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
Which can be seen at http://erichschubert.com/viewport.html.
But it always results in my site appearing zoomed in and even when zooming out, the whole site is not visible.
As of now I have it running with:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=1024">
Which can be seen at http://erichschubert.com.
It appears fine, however, when the ipad is turned to landscape it zooms in and leaves a huge black sidebar on the right side.
The header on the site has a fixed position and is also not displaying properly when zoomed in. Is the issue simply that it is fixed? I would love to able to display the whole site in both portrait and landscape and also be able to zoom in uniformly.
Thank you so much for any help in advance.

Answer 1

The initial-scale=1 is only practical if you use it alongside media queries, so it accurately scales the page to fit the custom styles for that media query.
Changing it to width=1024 only forces a fixed page width, which is no use in your case.
The smoothest way to have a page scale without zooming issues is to use media queries, to allow it to resize depending on the screen size.
Most devices will re-assess the screen width when they detect a change in orientation, while others will simply zoom in to fit the portrait layout to the landscape view.
If you want to be sure, you could use:
#media only screen and (orientation:portrait) {
/* portrait stuff here */
}
and for landscape:
#media only screen and (orientation:landscape) {
/* landscape stuff here */
}
I wouldn't recommend being so specific as to target individual devices, it's a never-ending workload. 'iPad' used to mean 768px x 1024px, but now covers 2048px x 1536px too. There will always be new devices, but they will all be targetable via simple media queries.