What's the best way (if there is one) to debug an error on my site reported to affect Blackberry only? Is there an emulator, or better yet, a proxy of some kind?
You can use a tool like http://crossbrowsertesting.com/. We have used this in the past to test all manner of scenarios to great effect.
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All my searches have turned up nothing of use. I saw mention of UTM but you have to do some shady stuff to get that to work and Merge VM Pro but that only has 5 reviews and 2 say it is a pile of junk.
I can't find any container frameworks that run on iPad.
Most search results are people saying Apple won't let other operating systems run on their devices which certainly fits Apple approach.
Any other legit ideas are appreciated. Basically I have an existing MVC Web app but I need it to work when iPad has no connectivity so can't use it like it is intended with just going to it from a Web Browser. It is a pretty beefy app so rewriting it in some other tech to run on iPad (e.g. Swift, Xamarin, HTML5) is what I am trying to avoid.
Is it possible to interactively remote debug an iOS App with xCode (or some other interactive debugger, if necessary)?
Has anyone got a neat framework I can stick in my App that will allow this? I can imagine Apple might not want this for live Apps, but for enterprise deployment and for Beta deployment, it would be ace.
A workflow that might work is a customer with a bug can get in touch and then I can email them with a link that will launch my app and connect it to my debug server. With magic.
There's an S.O. question from back in '11 about this – I'm hoping things might have moved on. However, a post here suggests it's probably not possible.
I want to be clear crash reporting, log acquiring and analytics are all very nice and everything (you're right – I use them too), but that is not what this question is about. Thank you :-)
Definitive answers along the lines of "This is just not possible because …" or, "It's possible but fearsomely involved because …", or ideally "Yeah, it's easy and cool, check out …" would be wonderful.
Thanks.
I think what you are searching is not possible. If you want, take a look at Bugfender, it's a product we have built that helps somewhat to do what you want.
With Bugfender you can get the logs from a remote device you choose, is not remote debugging but for now it might be the closest thing to what you want.
Is there an iPhone simulator plugin anywhere? We want to load some of our apps to our demo website for marketing purposes.
Does anyone know of anything that can do this?
Thanks
It's impossible, unless Apple releases some sort of plugin itself (which I can confidently say, will never ever happen). The closest you can get is to use some mockup templates/scripts to simulate the behavior of your app with Javascript/CSS/HTML5 canvas.
You can look into some web apps which provide similar functionality. Of course, not like the real thing, but at least, they can be a good starting point and even complete solutions for relatively simple projects. I've googled web iphone app mockup and got a few results: https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/ or http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/ may be helpful.
I am currently testing few features of a newsstand app manually. The kind of testing I do is pretty basic. To list a few:
Launch and exit the App
Launch, Navigate to menus and Login, Logout
Launch, take screenshot of splash screen
Launch, test the color of some text.
and so on. As there are 100s of tests like this, I want to automate these.
I do not have a Mac. Are there any tools (open source preferably) for achieving this?
Please note that I am kind of learning this myself and my company would not provide the cost required at this time. Its more of a PoC. So, when I have something concrete they will support eventually.
Please advice what tool I can use to achieve this (I hear a lot of things about Cucumber but I dont know Ruby. I am willing to learn, if that is the only best tool available).
Also, a sample code snippet on how to launch a newsstand app on the real device through an automated way would be cool.
Thank you!
Apple provides a Automation f/w as part of Instruments.
There are various tutorials/getting started guides available. Try searching "UIAutomation getting started" in google.
Some other third-party options for iOS application test automation:
Monkey Talk
Calaba
Telerik Test Studio
UI Spec
I had evaluated these tools some time back and decided to use Apple's UIAutomation f/w. It has many flaws but we have been able to use it successfully.
You will need OSX and XCode for automation. All UIAutomation frameworks are based around the instruments executable provided by Xcode.
I can also recommend the Illuminator framework which I wrote to overcome a lot of the bugs and shortcomings in Apple's UIAutomation.
I'd like my Blackberry devices to get and possibly set data to the server, and am a little confused by all the options:
RIM-Push/Pap-Push. Use any library that is able to compose a HTTP GET request to the MDS-CS service (not MDS-IS). This is a one way operation from the server to the device.
RIM-Push (Push a URL and or shorcut to a device for possible offline viewing)
PAP-Push (Same as above, BUT allows for message confirmation of delivery)
WebServices: Use Visual Studio 2008 to create a Web Services only project. I'm unclear if this is supported anymore, or if MDS-IS is used. This is a 2 way operation.
MDS-IS: Use Eclipse to develop the applications and Java is required, I am unsure of what client libraries are able to do (2 way operation).
Let me know if missing any option, or if I need to revise my understanding of the basics
This is actually quite a broad question - there are a lot of ways for a BlackBerry device to interact with a server, and the ideal way depends heavily on your specific application.
Generally:
MDS Studio: the Visual Studio 2008 method is no longer actively supported. It was a mostly visual forms designer, but not a great solution for a lot of reasons. Basically, don't use it.
Mobile Web: Depending on what you need to do, this might work. Everything server side. The thing to be aware of (and why this doesn't work for a lot of problems) is that prior to BlackBerry 6 the browser wasn't very capable, either in terms of HTML support or JavaScript support. You can, however, create shortcuts to mobile web sites which appear as icons on the BlackBerry homescreen. And you can use BlackBerry Web Signals: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/websignals.jsp to push changes to mobile web pages to devices
Widgets: Supported in BlackBerry OS 5 and higher. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/widgetsdk.jsp These are packaged much like 'native' BlackBerry apps, but written using HTML and JavaScript. Can be a good option for rapid development if you're ok with just targeting OS 5, and with the limitations of the BlackBerry Browser. Lots of JavaScript hooks to system functions, so they give you more functionality than pure mobile web, and you can distribute them through App World and the like.
Java Apps: Most development work, but you get potentially the best user experience, and the most functionality. Too broad a topic to cover adequately here, but there are a lot of questions related to these on SO and elsewhere. A good starting point is the BlackBerry developer zone: http://www.blackberry.com/developers RIM Push and PAP Push both fall into this category, as they interact with Java apps, though there are other methods that you can use to achieve similar results (client polling, or I've even seen SMS or email used to push info or wake up a client, though this isn't recommended by RIM).
For a deeper overview of the options I'd recommend a book by my friend John Wargo, called BlackBerry Development Fundamentals. He covers the various options pretty well.