Mobile development
As the mobile market continues to grow, it is essential for us, web developers, to make sure our stuff works on all platforms. As I was previously wondering how most of you are testing cross browser experience, I’m now curious to know if you test for mobile devices, and if so, what tools do you use?
Most of the mobile browsers use webkit as render engine, there are however some exceptions. Besides the render engine, the viewport is another bottleneck. So how do you deal with that? My first thought was to focus solely on the iphone. Using the iPhone SDK and the iPhone emulator that comes with it, I could easily test sites on my mac. The latest iPhone SDK even has an iPad emulator! So making sure everything works on those 2 devices was sometimes a pain in the ass… So after optimizing for iphone and ipad came the actual testing, not on-screen, but on my iPhone / iPad using my fingers to flick, tap, scroll, zoom and pinch my way around. A good help for making sure everything was usable were the iPhone human interface guidelines.
So now I had my projects working on only 2 mobile devices, whereof one not sold (yet) in Belgium. Hooray… Therefore I tried installing the Android SDK so I could mess around with their emulator. And then what? Install another SDK for nokia, blackberry (nowadays they use webkit),… Some time ago, someone on the fronteers irc channel mentioned Adobe Device Central. They offer a lot of platforms to test, but it seems a bit too flash minded and doesn’t always work the way I want.
Another great tip came in from Jon Hicks: Liveview, for Mobile Application Design & Prototyping Tool.
The point is: I’m kind of stuck with mobile testing, I can test on iPod touch, iPhone and iPad which seems ok for an apple fanboy like me, but off course, there is the harsh truth that not everybody is using one of those mobile devices… So what’s your secret setup for mobile testing?
