June 4th, 2008
Easy to Learn Cascading Style Sheets - Part IX
CSS And Handheld Supporting Browsers
When developing Web pages, it is beneficial to be able to test them on a handheld browser. However, not everyone has access to a mobile browser, and in addition, the costs of using one are fairly high. It is useful to be able to use a browser on a desktop for testing. Some of the browsers are only available on real devices, but the following browser tools are available for desktops:
The desktop version has all you need to test Opera Mobile. In the desktop version, use View - Small screen. If your page does not have a handheld stylesheet, this will use Small Screen Rendering to reformat the page in the same way as Opera Mobile. You can resize the window to see how it works at different resolutions. If your page has a handheld stylesheet, it will use that, in the same way as Opera Mobile. You can also use View - Fit to width, to see the reformatting for different sized devices.
Real Opera Mini, running inside a phone emulator.
Pocket IE on a PocketPC emulator running on your desktop. Note that the installer is a mess. You will also need the VM network driver. If you have trouble getting the network to work, install ActiveSync, and use that instead.
NetFront for S60 is a modular, scalable, full-featured mobile browser that supports full Internet browsing and offers the most comprehensive feature set currently available in the market. To make mobile browsing convenient, NetFront for S60 includes unique technologies like Smart-Fit Rendering™, which intelligently adapts standard Web pages to the screen width of a S60 phone and eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling. To get information as fast as possible NetFront starts displaying a Web page in a simplified format and automatically enriches the layout as more elements get downloaded. This Rapid-Render technology allows you quickly gain an overview about the contents and select further reading links before the complete download of larger objects such as pictures or animations.
NetFront provides S60 mobile professionals with a fast and powerful mobile Internet browsing experience and advanced features like configurable shortcuts for fastest access to program functionality, seamless integration with contacts and messaging applications, and support for user style sheets.
Now it also has intelligent Pop-Up Blocker, RSS/Atom feed support, web data and password manager, multiple browser windows, and improved DHTML support.
The Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 is a standalone version of the same ARM based Device Emulator that ships as part of Visual Studio 2005. The standalone emulator is intended for situations when you want to demonstrate or test your application on a computer that does not have Visual Studio 2005 installed. In addition, we are offering the Windows Mobile 5.0 MSFP operating system images that you can use with the Device Emulator.
Device Emulator 1.0 has a number of features that make it significantly better than its predecessor (the x86 emulator). Here are few features of Standalone Device Emulator:
# Runs code compiled for ARM processors rather than for x86 processors. In most cases, you can run the same binaries on the emulator as you do on the device.
# Supports synchronizing with ActiveSync. You can use the Device Emulator with a full ActiveSync partnership. This feature allows you to debug applications that are syncing, or be able to use real synchronized data from within the Device Emulator.
# Provides support for more development environments. The emulator has been tested for developing and debugging applications with Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET 2003, and with eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 (eVC4) SP4, all using ActiveSync. No crossover serial cable is required.
# The Device Emulator supports GAPI. You can write and debug GAPI games on the Device Emulator and expect them to work.
The latest Series 60 SDK (emulator) contains the Series 60 Browser. You will need to register to download it. Unfortunately it is a time limited trial, and it leaves some registry keys behind that it tries to prevent you from removing - presumably to enforce its time limit. Apparently they do not want Web developers to test in it. Pity.
Use normal Safari. The iPhone install is generally the same.
A Firefox extension that applies the Minimo main reformatting stylesheet to any page. It does not apply the site specific hacks that Minimo uses, and cannot simulate other browsers that use the correct handheld media, or media queries (so in other words, it only shows you how Minimo will render a normal Web page, it may be nothing like how the more common handheld browsers will render it).
Not really worth testing, but you can just use a normal Konqueror install, and make your window very small.
OpenWave with an emulator running on your desktop.
Note: If you want to test memory constraints, you will need to use an emulator or a real device. To test bandwidth constraints, you will need to use a real mobile device. Note that generic emulators are also available (such as emulators for Series 60 or Windows Mobile devices). These can be used to test other browsers.
