Do all iOS devices send iPhone, iPad or iPod as part of the User Agent?
Is it a good practice to test for those three strings to identify iOS devices?
Does it work for all browsers including Safari, Firefox, Opera(?), etc?
Using Ruby. I know I can use a gem but don't think it is necessary...
The rendering software for IOS commonly used is AppleWebKit (safari, chrome and firefox).
It is included in user agent.
Some other browser could differ.
Related
For testing browsers in different OS and different browser(versions), we can use browserstack. Is there anything similar thing, so that we can select device and install the app from app store and test?
You can try Ripple Emulator Chrome Extension
Ripple Emulator at Chrome Web Store
Was using it previously and it did a quite a nice job. Obviously its not as good as browserstack, but definitely helps a lot checking different sizes of screens and some of other page behaviour.
I have developed a responsive site. Now I want to check it for iPhone. I don't have iPhone. I came to know about iOS simulator. I am a windows user. Is it possible to use iOS simulator for testing in windows? If yes then which one and will it output as if real iPhone? I mean output will be 90% / 100% etc similar to real iPhone?
On Mac, Safari has a way to send the User-Agent string as an iOS device, and it may do a bit more fancy rendering emulations behind the scenes. I would try looking at Safari for Windows for similar features.
Chrome on the iPad support speech recognition for your search.
You can also use that within your own web page.
But it doesn't work on [my] iPad 2 with Chrome.
I can't find anything on the web indicating whether it is or is not supported on the iPad.
Because of Apple politics, that say apps can not "duplicate features that come with the iPhone" all full-featured browsers in app store must be a shells for Safari (default iOS webkit). This means that Google Chrome for iOS actualy just different looking Safari and does not include Chrome-specific API's.
I need to check rendering of a large sum of HTML5 "widgets" that will be shown in an iPad WebKit. Which desktop browser gives me the most similar renering experience? My widgets mostly consist of SVGs positioned with CSS3 and some CSS masking.
Is it Safari on a Mac?
EDIT: The desktop OS is not a concern, I can pick whatever I want for this...
EDIT: What particularly interrests me is if desktop Safari is closer to iOS Safari than Chrome is. They are both based on WebKit, but I see a lot of tiny rendering differences between Chrome and iOS Safari.
How about mobile Safari on the iPad Simulator?
Unfortunately, the iPad Simulator is Mac-only. If you can't test on that, Apple recommends using Safari and changing your user agent string to the iPad's user agent string. You can find instructions from Apple here.
Try real Safari. It uses Webkit and since you're on windows, you can't download the iPad simulator.
On the desktop, anything that uses WebKit is going to give you a similar rendering experience especially with regards to more technical things like SVGs. Unfortunately, there are still browser-specific quirks that you won't be able to notice without actually testing it on either the simulator or a real device.
Is there a trustworthy way to test iPad compatibility of a web application without buying the device itself? What about other tablets, do they provide any emulators?
If you have a Mac, just register with Apple (for free) and download the iOS SDK. It includes a program called 'iOS Simulator', which you can launch directly without knowing anything about Xcode/etc and includes Mobile Safari just like a real iPad. Since WebKit is exposed to iPad programmers for use in their programs, I'd expect the simulation to render identically to the real thing and, in practise, have never noticed any differences.
The iOS Developer Centre is here. Sadly, I have no experience of other tablets.
This is past mid-2012, now there are plugins or settings for User-Agent that "emulate" the connections for ipad (ios4 & ios5). Well it tricks the server into thinking that it is a different device.
For example, using Chrome, press F12 and click on settings (bottom right) and one of the tabs allows you to emulate the different devices.
safari - http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-activate-user-agent-switcher-in-safari.html
FF needs plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/
IE8 - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/18450/change-the-user-agent-string-in-internet-explorer-8/
IE9/10 - anyone can help?