Mobile Web View emulators / simulators

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Aitch
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Location: Manchester, UK

Mobile Web View emulators / simulators

Unread post by Aitch »

Hi all,

I hope you can help. I'm looking for a decent emulator or simulator (whatever it is called) to test a website out.
I found a couple here and there, but unfortunately FireFox and IE both display a little arrow where there is a dropdown box (android-emulator.org etc).
The reason I ask is I need to do videograbs, but unfortunately it looks like there are limited resources out there. Even the Android thing I found (called Screencast), seems good, but that requires me to root my phone, which I'm not that comfortable with doing.

Has anybody used any emulators that actually show a half decent rendition? (I'm on PC btw, I know Mac has a really good one for the iPhone).

Thanks in advance

H
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Re: Mobile Web View emulators / simulators

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Heidi,

Unfortunately, the only way to get a half-decent Android emulator is to install the entire Android SDK (software development kit), which is one of the most complicated, frustrating, error-prone and generally infuriating installation procedures I have ever experienced in my entire life. There are what feel like scores of different components that you need to get in different locations, the installation instructions might as well be written in Swahili and are also located all over the web in tiny unrelated bits, and you will get scores of failures along the way because some incomprehensible and well-hidden instruction wasn't followed correctly. Once you get everything working you discover that the emulator is pretty useless, as slow as wading waist-deep in molasses and that the results can't really be trusted.

The bottom line is if you need to test on Android you need to get an Android device. The few pounds you need to spend will cost you much less than the time you would spend getting dodgy results that you can't trust anyway with the emulator, and all those saved hours can be spent living. (I now have to have two iPads, an iPhone, two Android phones, an Android Tablet and a Windows Phone 7 device for testing mobile templates...)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Aitch
Posts: 544
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:52 pm
Location: Manchester, UK

Re: Mobile Web View emulators / simulators

Unread post by Aitch »

Thanks Tim,

I DO in fact have the Andriod SDK, and I completely agree.

And... we have all the devices to test on. What I'm after though, is a way to do a video capture of the sites working on the devices - without using an actual camera pointing at the device - my nails are chipped and that won't look very pretty :)

Screencast however, seems to capture videos on the android, but as mentioned before, that requires you to sign your life away and then hope you don't break something in the process. (which, with me is VERY easily done!)

:)
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