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All Web Developers Should Have Access to a Device Lab (Video)
This interview with Googler Pete LePage took place at Google I/O 2014, where Pete and coworker Matt Gaunt set up a Device Lab with 46 different devices on their display wall. The point wasn't to show off Google's coolness as much as it was to let developers see how their websites displayed on as wide a range of mobile devices as possible. This is reminiscent of the last century's Any Browser campaign, which was set up to encourage developers to make sites that worked right in any browser instead of having a WWW full of sites "best viewed in Exploroscape" that displayed poorly in other browsers.
Today, the trick is to make a site that is fully functional across a wide range of devices with different size screens that a user might decide to view in landscape mode one day and portrait mode the next. Google is happy to share their MiniMobileDeviceLab with you to help set up multi-unit displays. Pete also suggests checking out PageSpeed Insights and Web Fundamentals even if you're a skilled and experienced Web designer, because those two Google sites are chock full of information on how to make sure your site works right on most devices and in most popular browsers. (Alternate Video Link)
Today, the trick is to make a site that is fully functional across a wide range of devices with different size screens that a user might decide to view in landscape mode one day and portrait mode the next. Google is happy to share their MiniMobileDeviceLab with you to help set up multi-unit displays. Pete also suggests checking out PageSpeed Insights and Web Fundamentals even if you're a skilled and experienced Web designer, because those two Google sites are chock full of information on how to make sure your site works right on most devices and in most popular browsers. (Alternate Video Link)
but people can't be bothered or don't have the budget to make apps compatble with anything other than latest {pick a browser}. What happens when hypothetical boss (*cough*) says "Everything else is unsupported, tough luck".
There are less polite terms I want to use instead of "forget 'em."
Here's a free car analogy: scalable websites are like CAFE-required design elements on modern cars. Everything looks the same and ends up less efficient than it could be.
It's been a while since its happened. But self-slashdotting? This has to be a first.
Why would we want more websites on mobile devices? The experience sucks! Are we just trying to justify web developers now?
the outsourcing / IT / PHB can't pay for that.
and what about PHB driven IT rules that you need bypass just in some cases to have some then other then IE (hope it's not some old build) much less an mac, some non windows XP or 7 system.
everybody sjould have above average income, and only use renewable sources of energy.
Meanwhile in the real world...
Yes it was.
of the traffic on my company's ~250 different web sites, there's no way I could get a single device approved, much less 46! The article is unrealistic. When mobile traffic one day counts for more than a tiny fraction of a percentage of the traffic, then companies will start to invest in making the web sites work on mobile. As it stands today, I have almost ten times as many people still using IE6 so my time is better spent on IE6 compatibility than on mobile.
This is coming from the company that recently decided that Hangouts only works in their Chrome browser.
Sadly I work in the real world where there are thousands of web developers all vying for projects and undercutting to get the jobs, I can afford one mobile device, one tablet and my PC, stuff gets tested on those, if it doesn't work on flavour X of device Y who cares tbh, my customers certainly don't because time is money and they want stuff doing cheap, it works on most up to date devices is good enough for them.
3:07 This is one of my pet peeves! (pinch to zoom being turned off). If I can't zoom because some idiot chose form over function, I can't use the site on a mobile device. That is broken design. Luckily chrome on android has an accessibility option to turn off enforcing of pinch-to-zoom.
What exactly is the point of spending so much money on hardware when you could run >40 virtual machines emulating different Android devices?
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
- It sits high on a wall in some common area, far from the cubicle of anyone who would want to use the thing for actual testing
- Many of devices are mounted so high you wouldn't even see them without a stepstool let alone be able to interact with them (see hilarious video http://tv.slashdot.org/video/?...)
- Almost all the devices are Google Play edition devices or Nexus devices and they're all using Chrome for testing, none using stock Browser or Firefox or Dolphin or any other browser. Hardly a good cross-section of devices or browsers for compatibility testing! It seems more like a PR stunt to increase Google device visibility. In fact they even say this outright! "We picked our devices mostly from Google Play Edition devices, and picked a few other fun and shiney net devices that would look cool on the wall"
I am part of the Wikipedia Zero initiative, and we need to ensure that http://m.wikipedia.org/ runs on ALL platforms, including the mostly forgotten flip phones with no JavaScript. Which obviously presents the problem of testing. There are some sites (we have an account with one of them) that provides multi-platform testing, but all that means is multiple flavors of Android & IOS... with possibly the latest BB thrown in. Unfortunately, the bigger problem is the older devices, where capabilities were much more varied. One day I hope we can have access to the most commonly used labs testing, including various Nokias, etc. Hoping...
Instead, browsers should conform to standards consistently so that web devs can be reasonably certain their code will run properly across the board without the financially and practically unrealistic expectation of testing it on every imaginable browser for every imaginable device.
... the desktop?
No, not the webmonkey's desktop. More like, someone else's. Who's still stuck with 1024x768 and yet does not run the browser full screen, nor has the latest browser so no accelerated javascript engine, nor has quick hardware, or lots of memory, but does have a fsckton of tabs open so your website actually can't use much in the way of resources. And oh yeah, connected through wet string shared with a couple house mates, so no opening up fifty connections to load all those fancy avatars from people he's never yeard of, or the twenty behaviour trackers, or the five javascript libraries from elsewhere, or several megabits of continuous AJAX traffic for no reason, or ....
Just sayin'.
Every modern desktop browser has a way to view responsive design easily so you don't need a wall full of screens of different sizes and orientations, all you really need is a few mobile devices running various OS versions and a PC full of VM's so that you can catch platform specific bugs.
(Basic) HTML and CGI.
You get reflow, text sizing, pretty much everything you need to convey information and service data requests. You even get to use your own CPU for actual work, instead of stealing cycles from the viewer.
Funny how all my web sites still work on everything from palm pilots to iphones and android and all the big browsers, not to mention Lynx. They look ok, too, and reflow and behave according to how the USER wants to see the site.
I know, I know, you can't create Farmville this way. Ask me if I give a flying fuck. Ask me if I think the world would be missing anything important while you're at it. :)
In order for this to work, the PC has to be made by Apple. Safari has become exclusive to OS X and iOS, and Apple prohibits running an OS X VM on any host computer other than a Mac.
If web-devs need to check their websites on 40+ mobile devices, 5+ browsers, 4+ operating systems, ... this ends up with testing more than 200 combinations and ~$15k in infrastructure. Sounds like fun.
Anyhow, there are services like https://testobject.com/ (I'm one of the founders) where you get access to real devices in your browser.
We hope this will ease the pain of fragmentation.
http://xamarin.com/test-cloud They have a "data center" of phones that they have somehow virtualized. Cool stuff really.