Handheld browser testing

[redhillccwebmas]

Hi there,

I am interested in testing my future websites on PDA/Mobile browsers to see how they render - however, I am not seeing any services such as browser cam which allows you to test your sites on these browsers - any ideas guys?

Cheers

James

[Dan Schulz]

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...74#post3139174
http://www.robinsblog.com/11152005/r...ndheld-devices

Those should come in handy.

[Mittineague]

I highly recommend you download Opera and check it out. One of it's many features is a "small screen" view that emulates handhelds.

[johnyboy]

opera is a browser actually used on some phones. sony ericsson ones i think for example.

[DarkMage]

I highly recommend you download Opera and check it out. One of it's many features is a "small screen" view that emulates handhelds.

yup, opera is a really great tool when it comes down to making your design scalable... in addition, it's good to browse your site with at least couple of different hand-held devices just to see for yourself what areas need improvement. also pay attention to the fact that some mobile users disable the loading of images, so you should take that into account while designing your site (e.g. don't make image-based navigation system, especially if you're not going to define image tags for text-based browsers).

[logic_earth]

Same thing on the phones: http://www.operamini.com/demo/

[vgarcia]

yup, opera is a really great tool when it comes down to making your design scalable... in addition, it's good to browse your site with at least couple of different hand-held devices just to see for yourself what areas need improvement.

And this is why the mobile web will have such a hard time taking off, other than sites that cater to the lowest common denominator (i.e. spitting out really basic unstyled html with no images). Lots of web designers didn't even spend $599 on a mac mini to test their sites in Safari back when it was mac-only; I really doubt they'd spend thousands of dollars on a collection of mobile devices + data plans. Opera will get some love and so will the iPhone (probably mobile IE too), but I think that's where most developers will stop, if they even go that far.

also pay attention to the fact that some mobile users disable the loading of images, so you should take that into account while designing your site (e.g. don't make image-based navigation system, especially if you're not going to define image tags for text-based browsers).

That's easy enough to fix with alt text.

[Dorsey]

Add the OpenWave Simulator, too. It's really great, although there are some things that will pass on their and die on certain devices.

http://developer.openwave.com/dvl/to...one_simulator/

If you haven't tried your site on a mobile device, you'll probably be unpleasantly surprised the first time you do.

[dunc12]

Hi All

yeah I use opera mini on my blackberry and it is a good tool to check into to see how your website appears on PDAs this is a thing of the future and it is what is going to make and break a lot of sites. Need to get in now and make websites appear good on pdas as well as web. As if we havent got enough to do.

Dunc

[Dan Schulz]

I've been saying that for a while now, Dunc. (By the way, welcome to SitePoint! )

[johnyboy]

yup, it's just hit me after finding out i'm probably going to be doing an online shop, that it should be mobile-ised, and also seeing what amazon have done. their normal home page. www.amazon.com looks like what it normally looks like in a normal browser and on a mobile:







they're serving up a completely different page, not using the handheld feature which css gives.

i've worked out they're using the browser signature at least to differentiate between handheld browsers and normal browsers. accessing amazon.com with this browser signature
Opera/9.50 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/4.0.8439/20; U; en)
results in the simplified version.

what i'd like to know is how to simply and forwardly into the future to catch all handheld/mobile browsers (say in a .htaccess file). i suppose just using simple bits of the browser sig sutch as "Opera Mini" would be an idea. what other mobile sigs are there does anyone know? where could i get a list?

thanks.