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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.

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13 Responses to “Testing pda version of a site without pda”

  1. 1
    Physicist Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 5:34 am

    Mobile emulators: http://dev.mobi/node/272

  2. 2
    Physicist Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 5:35 am

    Top Firefox extensions for mobile content development: http://dev.mobi/node/123

  3. 3
    harry Says:
    September 9th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

    Hi Mr Physicist:

    i am trying to use the pda mambot, it is not working. Is it because i installed joomla under a folder named welcome? what should i do? please advise me

  4. 4
    Physicist Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 6:17 am

    harry:

    i am trying to use the pda mambot, it is not working. Is it because i installed joomla under a folder named welcome? what should i do? please advise me

    What test did you carry out?
    In any case more details allow me to give you better advice.

  5. 5
    Infomadness Says:
    September 11th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    I am having the same trouble. I installed the PDA mambot and published it. I am using your PDA template as well. But I am not seeing it working. I have installed my mambo under mydomain/cms

    Can you please help me with this?

  6. 6
    Physicist Says:
    September 16th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    Infomadness:

    I am having the same trouble. I installed the PDA mambot and published it. I am using your PDA template as well. But I am not seeing it working. I have installed my mambo under mydomain/cms

    Mambo? I haven’t test it in Mambo yet…

  7. 7
    Dan Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

    I installed the mambot and template and it seemed to work at first, but then not. I uninstalled both, then:

    1- Installed mambot and published it
    2- Installed template

    I do have a subdomain set up called pda. I am not seeing the template version in the subdomain, on a pda, or on a motorola phone browser.

    Is there anything else that might enable it? Anything need to be set in .htaccess or something like that?

    Thanks!

  8. 8
    Physicist Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 12:15 am

    Dan:

    I do have a subdomain set up called pda. I am not seeing the template version in the subdomain, on a pda, or on a motorola phone browser.

    Check that your subdomain is an alias to the main domain (or point to the same directory on server). There’s no need to modify .htaccess.

  9. 9
    Dan Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    Physisist,

    Yes, the subdomain is pointing to the same directory, which is also the root Joomla directory for the installation.

    Thanks,

    Dan

  10. 10
    Dan Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Is there anything else that you can think of that I should check? I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling a few times without success.

    Thanks!

  11. 11
    Physicist Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    Dan:

    Is there anything else that you can think of that I should check? I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling a few times without success.

    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.

  12. 12
    Infomadness Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Mambo? I haven’t test it in Mambo yet…

    I thought if it works in Joomla, it should work in Mambo. Aren’t they both same?

  13. 13
    Infomadness Says:
    October 4th, 2007 at 9:14 am

    Physicist,
    Do you know if I can make it to work for Mambo sites? Please help me.

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