mobiForge Articles Feed - Section: Testing

A Guide to Mobile Emulators

mokil — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:15:31 +0000

In a previous article, I put forward a three-point plan for testing mobile Web sites. One of the points involved the use of emulators for first-pass device testing. This article concentrates on configuring emulators for mobile site testing (it also highlights emulators that can be used to test mobile applications too). It outlines the different types of emulator available, the best ones to use, and the various ways in which they can be used.

For the uninitiated, an emulator is a software program that aims to replicate the functions of a specific piece of hardware or software.

Testing Mobile Web Sites Using Firefox

mokil — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:34:27 +0000

Before you ever begin testing your mobile site to determine how it looks on handsets, you should make sure the functionality of the site is working as you expect. This is not always straightforward, as you want to approximate the mobile environment as closely as possible. Fortunately, Mozilla Firefox supports some great extensions that can make testing your mobile sites a piece of cake. This article explains how to set Firefox up to act as a first pass test environment for your site.

Getting started with the ready.mobi API

ruadhan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:50:56 +0000

Ready.mobi is a well known page testing tool offered by dotMobi. When you supply a page URL to ready.mobi, it evaluates how well the page is likely to display on mobile devices by testing against the Mobile Web Best Practices, and dotMobi compliance rules.

Handy shortcuts to using Ready.mobi

adrian.hopebailie — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:37:19 +0000

I love Firefox. In fact I sometimes wonder how anyone ever did any web development or design without Firefox and its many great extensions. Well I've got 3 handy add-ons/tips for you that will make designing for mobile that much easier by enabling you to launch ready.mobi in seconds.

Audio/Video Playback & Streaming Support on Mobile Devices

daniel.hunt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:28:53 +0000

Audio and video are very important tools in the arsenal available to web-developers, marketing/sales types and content providers (to name but a few). Few are likely to remember the internet before YouTube, before on-demand playback of your favourite tv shows or even before Google for that matter, which means that the ability to embed movies and rich content in a webpage is almost certainly taken for granted in today's always-on world.

TADA Advanced Tests - A Tutorial

daniel.hunt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:28:35 +0000

Following on from my previous tutorial and the public release of TA-DA, I'd like to present a new tutorial based on 2 of our more complicated tests: Usable Display Height and Usable Display Width.

DeviceAtlas - TADA!

daniel.hunt — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:31:00 +0000

The Test Application (or “test suite", as it is also known) for DeviceAtlas is a system that has been developed which provides you, the user, with the opportunity to input device specific data directly into our system.

This simple process is demonstrated below in a step-by-step introduction to “My First Test Session" , so read on to find out more.

Fixit - Image Resizing

ruadhan — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:26:09 +0000

Images such as bitmaps have an intrinsic pixel size. Telling the browser in advance what the size is avoids it having to re-flow the page when it receives it. Resizing images at the server reduces the amount of data transferred and the amount of processing the client has to carry out to scale the image.

Fixit - Measures

ruadhan — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:03:47 +0000

Avoiding pixel and absolute measures allows the browser to adapt content to fit the display, though there are exceptions to this rule (see below). This test checks for the use of absolulte and pixel measures where relative measures would be more appropriate

Fixit - Tables

ruadhan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:45:21 +0000

This test determines if your page uses tables. Tables do not work well on limited size screens and may result in the user having to scroll horizontally to read them. Putting navigational links into tables may result in the user having both to scroll horizontally and vertically to see possible navigational choices.