Testing pda version of a site without pda
In this post I’ll describe some ways, which will allow testing the pda version of a site on usual computer.
Opera gives the good tool for testing, choose in menu View > Small Screen (Shift+F11) to see page in a display mode close to mobile devices.
Other way consists in use of Firefox and Web Developer extension. It allows to display page how it will be displayed on a handheld computer. Also for Firefox there is User Agent Switcher plugin. The PDA mambot contains following User Agent:
acer, alcatel, audiovox, avantgo, blackberry, blazer, cdm, digital paths, elaine, epoc, ericsson, handspring, iemobile, kyocera, lg, midp, mmp, mobile, motorola, nec, nokia, o2, openwave, opera mini, operamini, opwv, palm, panasonic, pda, phone, playstation portable, pocket, psp, qci, sagem, sanyo, samsung, sec, sendo, sharp, smartphone, sonyericsson, symbian, telit, tsm, up-browser, up.browser, up.link, vodafone, wap, windows ce, xiino
Consider, the “pda-status” is saved in cookies, therefore don’t forget to clear them (or simply to close a browser and to start it anew) after restoring User Agent to an initial status.
Opera have developed very useful emulator operamini.com/demo, it is possible to load page and to work with it as on usual mobile phone. Also you can try Opera Mini™ 4 beta simulator.
Also there is emulator of Sony K750 and Nokia N70 on a site dotMobi Emulator (but Nokia N70 emulator, probably, supports only English-speaking sites).
You can get full testing report of your site at ready.mobi v2.0.
Testing by means of emulators cannot replace testing on the real device; therefore, it is recommended to test a site whenever possible in real conditions.
If you know other ways of testing a site for a handheld computer, write them in comments.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 4:56 am and is filed under PDA plugin, Extensions, Joomla!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the 
RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
September 19th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Dan:
Then, I don’t know. It is looks like mambot not invoked (for some reasons). Check that it published once again. And try to set it first in order list for “system” type.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I thought if it works in Joomla, it should work in Mambo. Aren’t they both same?
October 4th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Physicist,
Do you know if I can make it to work for Mambo sites? Please help me.