iPhone Simulator or Emulator for WordPress?

Subsequent to last week’s Ycademy Seminar, I read on Bianca Gubalke’s blog a post about the difficulty to create a WordPress Mobile version without having recourse to a preview tool. As I agree with this statement, I will show you here below a simple method to preview your WordPress Mobile version for iPhone, iPod and iPad.

iPhone Simulator

The first question is: Do we need an iPhone Simulator at all? I have not seen a single free online iPhone Simulator which would render the mobile version of our WordPress sites. Online Simulators are therefore useless for our purpose.

iPhone Emulator

Free online Emulators I have come across do not generate a preview of the mobile WordPress version. There are some paid solutions which are however pretty cool and accurate, namely the MobiOne emulator included in the Studio version. There is a 14 day free trial, thereafter a $99 fee.

Surprisingly the emulator included with TheAppBuilder does not render the mobile version – this would be a real plus since it’s a free tool until you want to publish your app to a store.

There is a much easier to use solution out there which is accessible to anyone and available for Mac and Windows:

Preview your iPhone, iPod and iPad App in your Browser (Mac and Windows)

The quick solution to Bianca’s and still many other people’s problem has been solved by Apple itself. The Safari Browser is equipped with Developer Tools which allow to preview websites under multiple user agents amongst iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Here is how to get there:

1. Download Safari

2. Once Downloaded, go Edit -> Preferences-> Advanced

 

3. Tick “Show Develop menu in menu bar”

4. From the Develop Menu under User Agent select Safari iOS 4.3.3 – iPhone

5. Your Browser will switch to the Mobile view; reduce browser width to minimum to get the best idea of what it would look like on an iPhone.

To get an iPad preview, just switch the user agent to iPad.

 

Other Solutions

Other solutions are available, such as the iPhone Simulator from Apples Development Tools or the Firefox user agent extension; the latter is not as satisfactory as the Safari solution detailed above.

Conclusion

There is no more excuse for not customizing your Mobile WordPress version, namely if you work with WPTouch Pro :-).