Internet explorer on Windows Phone 7
Where the hell is the forward button in the browser Microsoft?????
Today we are going to focus on a great tool from Mozilla, Firefox mobile….on the desktop.
You may think it trivial, but unlike maps or YouTube, Google and other phone OS makers dont seem to update parts of the OS, such as the browser, with a lot of frequency. This leads to a somewhat consistent experience for users and devs, consistently good or consistently bad is unfortunately the issue.
Mozilla have created Firefox for desktop, which has significant market share, but on mobile it is not quite the case. A spotty support list and incomplete experience had plague Mozilla for a while, but recently they have hit back with a great new version, 10.
What is sometimes an issue though, is the fact that you have to use a phone, you may laugh at that statement, but there are many things you can do on a desktop outside of the browser, to help in testing. This is where Fennec proves very useful.
Fennec is essentially a desktop app that runs a mobile version of Firefox, with support for all mobile tools and addons. Network dependencies like caching, proxy and VPN are all possible by using a computer that is connected, in most cases, by a cable. By testing on such a computer, you now have the ability to test in a near real work situation. I know many will say, Safari with iOS user agent, but that has inconsistencies depending on the version you have.
All in all, Fennec is a great tool to use if you are wanting to test Firefox for mobile, but dont have a mobile.
The test suite
Logical Multi-App-Tasking
Here is what happens on a daily basis, you are out and about, snap a picture and want to share it, enter the world of multi-app-tasking through apps.
Step 1
What we are going to do is take a picture, then post to tumblr, but first we go to gallery to check and edit the shot, it is good, so i click the Android share button. Down drops a list of apps that are happy to share my picture and blog, so i click on one.
Step 2
I start writing my blog post and get interupted, so i hit the power button so i can come back to it later.
Step 3
I hit the tumblr app to continue writing my blog……oh no……it isnt there anymore. But where is it?
Step 4
Try and figure out where my post is….of course, its in the gallery app.
Summary
What Android does is let you have multiple sessions within the same app, i hook into the sharing function of Tumblr, but it doesn’t use the app, so the app is still open to be used. Why doesnt it simply take you to the app and show you your half written post you say?
What is amazing is that Android 4 doesn’t identify that you have hooked into tumblr, so i can be sharing through gallery and not know it. Sure, the little picture will show what you are doing in the background, but that isn’t always conclusive of the fact that the app is working with another.
The whole confusion comes as Android doesn’t know what multi-app-tasking is, it thinks its all about open apps, but actually its the state of apps people want to know about. I want to know if im writing a tweet about a picture i have seen on a web page, or sharing a funny post from reddit on facebook, but without multi app tasking, we just dont know.
The final nail in the coffin is the fact that in android 4, if you swipe away open apps in the multi task window, it deletes the state of the app, and that blogpost you have been working on…..no warnings, no notifications, no help.
Bug #5 Google, fix multi app tasking.
I want people to know where to go when you get a notification, it used to different for every phone, but peer pressure is forcing software devs to the notification draw.
The nokia with meego is using a drop down button for wireless and account notification, such as Google talk. They have also used a notifications feed, this is good because it essentially combines social networking with emails and texts, the social part are shortcuts to apps on handset. In all honesty, I think this is the best notification system, its a shame nokia decided to rip off android instead if themselves.
The next phone is the failing nokia symbian OS, with a blatant rip off of Apples notification draw, which is a blatant ripoff of Android notification draw. I guess that decided to just go with what is in the market, rather than try something new.
The final contender is the android phone, where it all began, the future of all notification design. Actually, it is a simple concept, but Google pull it off well.
Something that will cause you great pain while teating is battery charging. While a nokia from 5 years ago will seemingly have a endless charge, the latest iPhone leaks like a sieve.
My advice is to have your most frequently used devices fully charged before you go home, that way you can get to work asap the next day.
One thing you should also note about charging, is that power saving options are for an hour or so of daily use, not 6 hours of testing. Power saving features like turning off WiFi will slow you down and waste time.
If you have the budget, invest in a power strip and lots if chargers, I find having at least 5 charges on my desk at all times essential.
To sum up this post, we will talk about the charging symbol, everyone OS has a different way of registering battery life, so don’t assume 50% life will be the same across every phone. For that reason, any kind of battery tests for video or images should be done with a old fashioned stop watch.
Bug #5 Apple, fix your battery life.
Blackberry 7 is helpful?
Today I discovered a very useful tool in the browser of BBOS 7, a remote debugger.
What RIM have done, is allow your phone to be visible on the network and then connect to it through a browser, once there, it displayed pages that are loaded on your phone. Each page can then be viewed as you normally would, using the console and CSS tabs in dev tools to identify issues.
Although you can use chrome USB debugging, this option from RIM is much better.
While I will say nice things about RIM, there is a big but, the browser is terrible. It crashes a lot and has some support issues too. The remote debugging is not a perfect experience either, it will stop working randomly and could use a few more options.
All in all though, RIM have done ok, while they have a lot of work to do, this tool should help you identify what has gone wrong in the terrible browser relatively easily.
Desktop browsers
While the browser hasn’t changed in 2 years on android 2.1, desktop browsers move at an incredible pace. The 2 big examples are chrome and Firefox, moving from version 4 to 9 in 1 year. Both use auto updating, so the user will always have the newest version, but you cant assume everyone is. The only real way to test is to ensure you have the current version and a version from around 3 months previous to the update. In some updates, there are feature additions rather than core code changes, so reading the change log is important.
Internet explorer is a classic case of where do you start. In general, IE 6 & 7 are lost causes, they simply don’t cut the mustard, but after that, the support gets better. With windows 7 rising in numbers, pressure to use IE 9 will be high on users, which makes picking test browsers a little easier. The upcoming Windows 8 will feature IE 10 with the desktop and metro version, with the panel snapping feature to test as well, responsive testing may be the end of you. What you have to decide are what your test browsers are going to be, remember that some people will be using your site on a net book or windows tablet, making testing on desktop as important as mobile.
IOS options
Get used to these words, clear cookies and cache. Most of the time, this is the reason you aren’t looking at the latest build. So you would think in this day and age that Apple would give you the option to clear each individually, not on iOS 5.
You get a single button that just screws around with your testing, especially of you just want to clear the cache. What I want to see from Apple is a change in the way they let you test pages, extra options with the option to send log files to a computer. I would also like to see a storage area on the phone, so you can save cookies for later and reload when you are on a page. If Google have already done this but buried it in a sub menu, I’m sorry, if not, they should do it too.
Bug #4 Apple, sort out cookies and cache options.
One of the daily hazards of using so many devices is that you can often be stuck in how to turn on a device. In this case, the Motorola Xoom, we can clearly see the power button on the back of the device.
Why they did this, who knows, but you will find hardware is often a hurdle, rather than a tool
