Mobile emulators - responsive-design

I'm developing a new Responsive layout for different smart phones, tablets etc, so i require a single emulator to test for all the devices. Like to know if any one have used any thing.
Note: I have used media queries and flexible layout for my design

First i would recommend you test your applications/websites or real devices.
If it's not possible for you to get those then there are few suggestions.
Opera Mobile Emulator ( It provides significant varieties of different view-ports. You can also test on your own custom View-port.)
There are some online tools also to test your websites/applications.
Responsinator ( Just put your live URL there and get your website's responsiveness on different devices' view-ports. )
Hope you'll have better ideas.

Related

Mobile Development: Same or Different Sites?

I am considering developing a mobile edition of a web site for an application, and I'm considering whether to revamp my existing site to work for mobile, or create separate web sites. It seems to me even though some tout the benefits of CSS's capabilities, separate web sites is the way to go. Although devices like the IPAD and other 10" devices can support a full screen view, handling support for a limited view for devices with a 4" or 7" screen is a good way to go?
Factoring in phones, tablets, notebooks, and other third party devices, do you think its possible to use the same site across web and mobile environments, or definitely consider a separate site?
Ultimately, this will come down to the individual preferences of your site's visitors.
Personally, when I visit a site on my phone, I get annoyed when I'm automatically redirected to some mobile version. When I access the site in such a manner, I'm usually trying to look up something quickly -- not looking to learn how to navigate around an essentially different site.
So, I would say that if you do design a different site for mobile users, attempt to stay true in some ways to your original layout, and don't vastly change the reorganization or URLs.
Having said that, I'd still say the better route would be to change your current design slightly so that it works well on both. Good luck.
Factoring in phones, tablets, notebooks, and other third party devices, do you think its possible to use the same site across web and mobile environments, or definitely consider a separate site?
Absolutely, yes. Lots of great examples at http://responsivewebdesigns.tumblr.com/

Is it advisable to have a mobile version of a web application?

With the advent of smart phones, individuals are now able to access a given site or application in one of three ways:
Through the same site that is rendered on desktop machines
Through a minimized mobile version of the site
Through a proprietary mobile application
In an ideal world, users could choose from any of those three methods. However, there is a cost associated with implementing additional interfaces on top of the existing Web interface.
I'm seeking verifiable information (statistics, trends, Gartner predictions, etc.) that could help someone justify the creation of a minimized mobile site and/or proprietary mobile applications vs. having a well-crafted site that renders fine in mobile browsers.
I found an article covering Nielsen's 2009 recommendation but the article seems to suggest that you should address mobile users, not so much how to determine which method(s) are more appropriate (not to mention there aren't any references to mobile apps).
If your site renders fine in mobile browsers, why would you need a minimized one? Remember not everyone has an iPhone. Blackberry users usually need a special version, unless your site has Wikipedia like simplicity.
You can look at your logs and see how many users come that have mobile phones. Check this against the bounce rate, this will tell you if they can view your site or not.

How to adapt mobile site for different mobiles?

I am developing a mobile site for iphone, and i want it to be used in other mobiles, for example, gphone, blackberry, sumsong, motorola etc.
what should i do for adapting the mobile site for so many different mobile devices?
Thanks for any advice.
Unfortunately I do not think there is an easy answer to this, other than to say that the simpler you make your mobile site the more likely it is to appear correctly/consistently across multiple devices/networks. You also need to consider the 'app' mindset with iPhone, where something that previously might have been presented simply as a web site, is now frequently presented in an app instead. Finally, bear in mind that many phones do not support flash (iPhone famously..), silverlight, javascript etc. If your site loses too much of its look and feel without these than you may have to redirect to targeted sub-sites per phone type.
See this similar question which may help you get a feel first for how your web site looks on different devices and in different networks:
Testing Mobile Sites
If you do need to change the look and feel for different phones, then you will need some way to detect the phone types - there are many articles etc about this which you should be able to find with Google - for example:
http://www.hand-interactive.com/resources/detect-mobile-php.htm
Again, it would be good to test whatever one you use in your target network to check it works as expected (operators may use devices, for example proxies and optimisers, which may affect how things arrive at your webserver or phone...).

Repurposing a site for mobile platform

I have an existing website running. I want this site to be able to be viewed on mobiles smart phones as well. I am ready to shave off some stuff, but would like to know how can I test this and are there any tools/guidelines on how to repurpose the site to be best viewed on mobile phones ? How to detect on the web site whether a mobile phone or a PC is hitting the site and accordingly serve the appropriate content.
There are few factors to consider such as:
- screen size
- touch vs non-touch
To detect whether the mobile phone hitting your site, you can simply verify the user agent.
There is a good article on this at A List Apart which will answer your implementation questions: Put Your Content in My Pocket
You can test by setting the user agent of your browser to that of mobile device. This can be done in safari under the develop settings, or firefox has various plugins.
And a tip, don't use anything that requires hover functionality. Touch screens don't hover.
You will find out it's a strange new world at http://mtld.mobi/
First decision you should make is which mobile platforms you want to support, then start coding...
As some one mentioned http://mtld.mobi/ is the best place to start for resources but for testing I would use http://ready.mobi that will test and debug your site and provide interface to viewing your website in mobile platforms.
First you need to decide what platforms/browsers you are going to support. If it is only smart phones like Android/Iphone/Blackberry it would be a pretty safe bet that as long as the website works in crome and isn't VERY javascript intensive and the site is catered for smaller screens it would be fine.
That is the theory in practise mobile is mobile and real world testing is the only way to go for 100% coverage.

What is the best 'method' to do an online MOBILE Text Based 'App'?

With all the different mobile phone browsers and the mobile market being so diverse I'm having a hard time deciding on a way to create a text based online game for mobile phones.
I was thinking about using HTML / CSS / Javascript for front-end and Python CGI for server-side (with a DB).
Now this seems like a very obvious choice... BUT I'm having a hard time finding the "limits" to each one... by that I mean at what point will a popular web browser stop 'supporting' a technology. Like when it comes to HTML I assume you cant use HTML5 features in all popular mobile browsers... or maybe some allow JS but not jQuery... or maybe some don't allow some common CGI features or DOM is weird... I do not know.
I have read a few different tutorials on various mobile web browser development but nothing really helps to answer my question.
So what I'm asking is basically:
What languages/technologies do you recommend for a Text based mobile online multiplayer turn based browser game that will need to dynamically load a lot of info?(front front end to back end)
What are some common limitations between popular mobile web browsers I should look out for? I want to be compatible with all popular mobile web browsers.
One of the things to keep in mind is that there is a plethora of mobile browsers out there (Look here for details). So you are probably better off starting with iphone, android and blackberry and maaaybe opera mini browser support. These browsers have sophisticated java script support and you would be able to provide a good user experience. Later on you can work on supporting other mobile browsers.
Regarding your questions, if you look at these browser specs (and they are readily available on Internet) you will see that you will be able to use quite a bit of web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc). That wont be a showstopper for you. Designing for a small screen, and a great user experience on small screens, that will make or break your game.

Resources