It looks like this post may indirectly answer your question. When the iPhone rotates, the “top-level” view is sent a notification, and this view is responsible for laying out its subzones.
If your UIWebView is a top-level view, it is automatically autorotated. However, if you place the UIWebView inside another view and the container controller has the shouldAutorateToInterfaceOrientation method for this view as the container:
-(BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { return NO; }
This would probably prevent the UIWebView from knowing that the interface was rotated. Please note that I have not actually tried this, but it should work.
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