Remote Preview

Posted on 11 Nov 2012

Remote preview is a tiny JavaScript based tool which I built for our test lab. It allows you to preview any URL on large number of mobile devices simultaneously. Just enter a URL, hit enter, and new URL gets automatically loaded on each device. Remote preview works on platforms like Android, Blackberry, iOS, Maemo, Meego, Symbian, Windows Phone and WebOS.

Remote Preview works by making an ajax call every 1100ms to check if the url in the ‘url’ file is changed. If it is, the script will then change the src attribute of the br and load a new page into it. If there’s no changes, the script will just keep polling the url file until something changes. Remote Preview allows very fast previewing of different URL’s to check for possible layout problems, which can then be debugged using various other tools depending on the platform where they occur.

There are some issues and limitations with the way it’s being done, but as there currently is no other tool which allows you to preview web pages on all these platforms, I think this can be a handy addition to any test lab’s toolset.


Basic usage

Copy and paste all files to a public Dropbox folder/server/localhost, edit ‘url’ file and wait for devices to refresh. That’s all! You might also want to bookmark Remote Preview to your device’s home screen for fast & easy application like access later on (bonus: If you moved all files to a server or localhost, you can control the devices via web browser by pointing your browser to the directory named ‘control’).

Browser support

Current alpha version is tested to be working on at least following platforms:

  • Android OS 2.1 - 4.1.2 (Default browser + Chrome)
  • Blackberry OS 7.0 (Default browser)
  • iOS 4.2.1 - 6 (Default browser)
  • Mac OS X (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera)
  • Maemo 5.0 (Default browser)
  • Meego 1.2 (Default browser)
  • Symbian 3 (Default browser)
  • Symbian Belle (Default browser)
  • WebOS 3.0.5 (Default browser)
  • Windows Phone 7.5 (Default browser)
  • Windows 7 (IE9)

Download

Source code is hosted on Github →


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