What Mac Application Do You Recommend For Previewing Mobile Websites?

I am learning to design websites for mobile devices (smart phones and tablets). What Mac application do you recommend for previewing mobile versions on my Mac?

Thanks

Hi,

There is a an iphone and ipad simulator included in the mac Xcode development package and provides an almost 100% accurate test for iphones and ipads.
https://developer.apple.com/xcode/index.php

You can download the android skd also from here:

And there is a mobile opera emulator here:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mobile-emulator/

The first two are massive and complicated downloads but are more accurate than many other emulators which simply squash the screen into smaller windows.

Of course nothing actually compares with testing in the real device but only large organisations can afford multiple devices just for testing.

Thank You

There are 6 possibilities listed on this web page:

Be careful as many of those are not correct interpretations of a mobile environment and will not show specific behaviours and errors which would be the prime reason for testing. They are ok for a quick test but not to be relied on as a complete emulation. The emulator in the apple sdk on the other hand is 99.9% accurate and the main tool you should use to check ipads and iphones (apart from the real device) but of course you do need to be on a mac.

Paul,

Don’t you need to turn the website into an iOS app in order to preview it in Xcode? That may be going further than he had in mind.

No, the iPhone/iPad emulator is a separate app that you can use just like the real devices. Just type/paste the URL as you’d do on the real device and browse the web as normal.

No as Ralph said the ‘simulator’ is a stand alone app that you can use to simulate the ipad and iphone/retina. You do have to download the whole xcode to get it (which is a bit of a pain) but then you can just stick the simulator in the dock and then drag or type urls in the address bar to browse as usual. It works on local files also so is ideal for testing.

You can test in portrait and landscape mode and the mouse imitates touch gestures and you can even test two finger scrolling and zoom and pinching with a combination of keys.It is more or less 100% accurate as you would expect as it s also meant for app development. Of course nothing beats the real device as there are always nuances in how a mobile really works and displays.