Testing Mobile websites

[djr33]

I agree with Beverley.

There is a very important distinction to make between current 'standard' technology and outdated/substandard technology.

It is your job to make your website compatible with users of all modern browsers and devices. You should, for example, make an effort to make your website compatible with the recent versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. And same for modern mobile devices like the iPhone.

It is NOT your job to make your website compatible with outdated or substandard technology. As Beverley said, those devices just do not work for anything-- they display information, but they do not display it well. Your job IS to make your website functional on these devices (by keeping it simple), but you should not try to "fix" these devices.


Current technology: make your website look good.
Backwards compatibility: make your website functional (only).

[letom]

Thanks..Advices are nice..accepted

make your website compatible with the recent versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.

That is already supported.. No issues with that.. I am not talking about old handsets of 5 years back, But there are some handsets available with old browsers, but they express very nice stereo music and excellent color display in their handsets(all facilities are good except their browsers).

It is NOT your job to make your website compatible with outdated or substandard technology

Yes sure, but there we can arise other some questions as follows,

if we purchase a new car and that will not run in old roads, how can we reach to the destiny ?
If the radar is not working is hazardous environment conditions how the ATC(Air traffic controller) will fix the route with the cockpit crews ?
(that why microwave band are discovered, otherwise they can use other weak waves to capture the signals from radar).

That means what ever product we are developing that should work in all severe conditions or environments at least with a minimum service it can provide.
When there a need arise , we discover new things, innovations are not to make profit only but to the smooth existence of human beings..

[djr33]

if we purchase a new car and that will not run in old roads, how can we reach to the destiny ?

That's not your problem. The car doesn't work well. You cannot, in building your one "road" (website) fix their device. It's their choice (or an accident) to have such a bad device. Really, the best thing you can do is make the website accessible.

But it's up to you. If you want to invest hundreds of hours in every bad device, yes, you can probably improve your website. But why? They'll just realize that they have a bad device and buy a new one in a year or two.

When there a need arise , we discover new things, innovations are not to make profit only but to the smooth existence of human beings..

In the real world, all that matters is a balance between time/energy and reward. If you want to spend the time for 1% of the population, go for it. I don't, personally.
And if you don't do it well (if that's even possible for some devices) then you will run the risk of actually making the page harder to access.



Here's a parallel situation:
"My website requires that visitors cannot right click. It's very important! Therefore, all of these browsers are broken, and it's my own personal job in life to fix them by adding a no-right-click script to my website. How can I do this perfectly in Javascript?"

There are a number of problems with that scenario (and they apply to your questions as well):
1. You can't possibly deal with all browsers/devices, and when you try you'll just find more and more being created that are also problematic. You can deal with a lot of them, but not all. Decide on a limit and don't worry about the rest.
2. It's ALWAYS a bad idea to try to control what the visitor can do. It's best to present them with useful information and allow them to view it in the best way. Trying to "fix" their browser/device is also trying to control how they use it-- that's generally a bad idea. The internet is a user-designed system, not a designer-designed system. You're not in control, and you never will be. (This is why, for example, it's impossible to prevent people from stealing images from your website. It just can't be done.)
3. In some situations, the features you're trying to control are very useful for the visitors. Consider special scenarios like a text-only browser (screen reader) for deaf visitors. Or in another case, someone might be colorblind and want to cut and paste your text to view it in a new window-- disabling right click could cause major problems. These things also apply to controlling the view on a mobile device. What about people with bad eyesight? Do you want to make it hard for them?


In the end, you can do whatever you want. And there may be small exceptions to these generalizations. But in general, we've given you reasonable advice about how to deal with a necessarily imperfect situation.

[letom]

ayyyy .. tks fr your information

In the end, you can do whatever you want.

There is no need inform that thing explicitly, when you say, The internet is a user-designed system, not a designer-designed system.

we've given you reasonable advice about how to deal with a necessarily imperfect situation

Thanks, But all the information stated here, except 1 or 2 things are known to me.

The conversation is not going to the technical level, instead it is repeating what said earlier. Limited knowledge may cause repetitions

[Beverleyh]

The conversation is not going to the technical level, instead it is repeating what said earlier.

Thats because it doesn't need to be technical. Making a mobile compatable website isn't an ultra-technical feat. I assume that you are speaking about the coding rather than the design, but you seem to be willing this to be more complicated than it needs to be. From a 'technical' standing, a mobile compatable website follows all the same coding 'rules' than a desktop compatable website follows but in a lighter, more streamlined way - HTML, CSS, a few images, a few javascripts, all wrapped up in a container that looks good at a small resolution (and a variety of larger ones), is easy to navigate and serves the user useful content/information.

If you want more specific advice, its probably going to help if you refine your questions. Try making a list of your goals or things that you need to research, then read some articles, look at other examples, take notes and make a decision based on what you've learned.

I know that sounds very general (and a lot of it is common sense) but at the end of the day, you are the person who holds all the information about your website project so you need to design around that and decide the best ways to deliver that information to visitors.

[letom]

Thats because it doesn't need to be technical. Making a mobile compatable website isn't an ultra-technical feat. I assume that you are speaking about the coding rather than the design, but you seem to be willing this to be more complicated than it needs to be.

can u explain how we can speak about design ?

There you miss some thing... Coding brings design ,if we are not coding the website , how the design come into existence ? Design is supported by coding, we are doing coding to get the design, so developers or designers are thinking about coding, it(coding) includes all the facts and solve the issues, design, security, problem solving, functional requirements and more

To speak about design we need to discuss about coding.
,

[Beverleyh]

There are certainly blurred boundaries between web design and web development, however, for the purpose of this thread I was trying to help you narrow down the options and refine your question - you were focussing on the 'technical' and I (maybe wrongfully) assumed you were referring to the specifics of code, based on the previous thread content (you raised the concern of headers and used a meta tag example after all)

The designer/developer debate is heavily discussed on the web - I too wrote a short article myself, although if you search Google you will find more detailed arguments from people in both fields. If you'd like to read my brief interpretation, you can find it here: http://fofwebdesign.co.uk/faqs/whats...evelopment.php

As far as I can see, this thread topic has now served its purpose and the original question has been answered sufficiently, to the best of our knowledge, so we will be closing it.

In the future, if you can formulate a specific question that we are able to help you with, without ambiguity, please feel free to start a new topic.