Remote Preview

Nov 11th, 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 is a tiny JavaScript based tool that allows you to preview any URL on large number of mobile devices simultaneously.

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 iframe 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 version is tested to be working on at least:

OS Browser Android 2.1 – 4.1.2 Stock WebKit + Chrome Blackberry 7.0 Stock Browser iOS 4.2.1+ Mobile Safari Mac OS X Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera Maemo 5.0 Stock WebKit Meego 1.2 Stock WebKit Symbian 3 Stock WebKit Symbian Belle Stock WebKit WebOS 3.0.5 Stock WebKit Windows Phone 7.5 Internet Explorer Mobile Windows 7 Internet Explorer 9

Download

Remote Preview on GitHub→

I’m an independent design systems architect specialized in helping organizations to build design systems. Get in touch.

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