Emulate A Mobile Web Browser In Firefox.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

I am trying to get my website Mobile ready, and I happened to come across a firefox plugin that will emulate devices so there is no need to download mobile device emulators.

Website Link: http://techie-buzz.com/tips-and-tricks/ ... refox.html

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How To Emulate A Mobile Web Browser In Firefox?

by Keith Dsouza | Tuesday, 24th Feb 2009 | 10 Comments | Share

There are several times when you may want to test out a mobile website, or use mobile websites to save bandwidth, since they load pretty fast and do not use heavy images, which in turn can use up more bandwidth from your ISP.

mobile_web_browser

However many mobile websites redirect users back to a regular website, when you visit it using browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or Internet Explorer.



Also Read: Monitor Your Bandwidth Usage

If you are looking to test a website or save some bandwidth while surfing your favorite social networking site, a simple Firefox add-on could help you emulate a mobile web browser and let you surf the website, like you would do in a actual mobile web browser.

The trick involves changing the user agent string, that is sent out to website, to make them think, that the request is coming from a actual mobile web browser, you can practically emulate default system browsers from any phone.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Hey it works...cool!


Here is a site where you can import all the latest "User-Agents" for this addon.

If you need any help just post here.

Link to Website: http://techpatterns.com/forums/about304.html
Link for File Download: http://techpatterns.com/downloads/downl ... itcher.xml

Enjoy!

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Okay, to show you what can be done (not that it's in any way earth shattering) by changing the user agents in this firefox addon.

I first visied this site using the default Firefox 12.
Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

The attachment standard.JPG is no longer available

I then changed my user agent to use iPhone 3.0 (I have several agents installed, but I chose this one because I am lazy). I visited the exact same website above, and here is the result.

The attachment iphone.JPG is no longer available

As you can see that by using this plugin works. The full , and only real reason for having this addon is so that you as a web designer/webmaster can test out their website if you are designing it to support mobile devices without having to do a test using precious time, and resources by using the real device.

Now why am I interested in this in the first place? Well I am wanting to make my website more accessible to the hugh masses out there (yeah right :blink: ) so I thought I would give this a go. Now the real unfortunate aspect of my doing this, is I'm am a very lazy person when it comes to this sort of thing, and I was looking for another way out so to speak. I did come across Wibiya which is providing such a service will do a simple redirect to their services area and make my website appear to be made for Mobile devices... So I had at it, and so far it doesn't work worth a squat. Of course their attempt is still in the beta stage which means allot. Personally I think that they should still be in alpha stage but hey that's just me being a bonehead!