Keep phone numbers from being converted to links on Opera Mobile

Question

Apparently, those guys at Opera have added a nice feature to their mobile version of the browser: They convert things looking like phone numbers into HTML links on webpages (e.g. USD 15.50, which clearly isn't a phone number).

The feature is described here: http://my.opera.com/operamobile/blog/2010/02/12/opera-mobile-10-beta-3-for-both-symbian-s60-and-windows-mobile

Can that be suppressed in HTML using a proprietary META tag or something like that? It really screws up our application... Do other mobile browsers also have such a feature that I should be aware of?

EDIT: Thanks for providing me with the link to the questions indicating the <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no"> tag. That appears to solve the problem on the iPhone, but not on Opera Mobile

see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3712475/mobile-html-rendering-numbers and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3736807/remove-styling-of-telephone-numbers — patrickmdnet, Dec 03 '10 at 17:32
Unfortunately, that meta tag doesn't seem to work for Opera Mobile :-/ — Lukas Eder, Dec 06 '10 at 09:02
try this one, helped me: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3736807/remove-styling-of-telephone-numbers — Turtletrail, Nov 04 '12 at 11:19

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '10 at 20:23

1

A lame solution:

Use Javascript to remove any links with href="tel:...".

answered Dec 07 '10 at 20:23

docwhat

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That lame solution is just good enough. Although, it really is lame :) – Lukas Eder Dec 11 '10 at 19:35
This does not work with Opera Mobile 12, there are no `` elements surrounding the hyperlinked phone number. – Phil Jul 31 '12 at 08:44
Well, I did say it was lame. :-/ *sigh* – docwhat Aug 01 '12 at 23:35

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 07 '11 at 07:29

After some trial and error this seems to work in Opera Mobile and on Mobilizer:

The HTML text (really should be "Samsung MSC 13800 TEU")

Samsung MSC 13,800 TEU

(put a span tag around the comma with a class of "hide")

The CSS

span.hide { display:none; }

The comma is a fudge within "13800 TEU" and probably very annoying for assistive technology users (those with screen readers) but I follow that 80-20 principle (there would be more confused sighted users than those with a vision impairment ;-)

Keep phone numbers from being converted to links on Opera Mobile

2 Answers2