Testing Mobile JavaScript
John Resig
June 2010

I’ve been researching and trying to make
sense of the mobile space recently.
Started preparations in 2009 (with the creation of TestSwarm).

Cross-browser mobile web development is crazy.
(...but not nearly as crazy as it use to be.)
I’ve seen things...

A Simple Goal
✤ Started with a simple goal:
✤ To make sure that jQuery works on the most popular mobile
platforms and browsers.
✤ As it turns out, it’s really hard to define the scope of the problem.

Questions: Answered
✤ Three questions that need to be answered before doing mobile
development:
✤ What platforms and browsers are popular?
✤ What browsers are capable of supporting modern scripting?
✤ What devices and simulators do I acquire to test with?
✤ To answer those questions we need good data.

Best Stats?
✤ Who has the best statistics on the mobile market?
✤ StatCounter and Gartner seem to be tops.
✤ StatCounter covers billions of hits per month.
✤ Gartner is well-respected and knows sale information well.
✤ AdMob is decent for specific platforms (iPhone, Android).
✤ That being said: Very little actually-useful information leaks out.

Lack of Information
✤ Right now finding this information is a challenge.
✤ As a result, developers develop for what’s in front of them:

Platforms

Platform Sales

Hard Question
✤ What versions of those platforms are popular?
✤ No one seems to know, or isn’t talking about it.

Browsers

Hard Question
✤ What versions of those browsers are popular?
✤ No one seems to know, or isn’t talking about it.
✤ Supposedly Yahoo is going to be releasing some
information soon, we’ll see.
✤ Right now it’s considered to be a competitive
advantage to keep it private.

Testing Strategy
✤ Draw a line in the sand
✤ Buy Devices, Download Simulators
✤ Automate testing (TestSwarm!)

Drawing a Line
✤ Yahoo!s Graded Browser Support technique is optimal.
✤ Qualify which browsers you will support (actively test against) and
give them a grade.
✤ A = Full support, C = Fall back to old site, Other = Assume full
support.

My God... it’s full of browsers...
Mobile Graded Browser Support: Market share + Browser quality

Testing Browsers
✤ Two options:
✤ Buy devices and/or
✤ Download simulators
✤ Simulators are good for most automated testing.
✤ Any sort of interaction testing you’ll want to do on a physical device.
✤ Always good to do a sanity check on a physical device before going
live.

Simulators
✤ Simulators are available for most platforms and browsers.
✤ Most simulators require Windows to run (some require Perl or
Java)
✤ Some browsers even provide standalone executables (Opera, Fennec).
✤ Getting the simulators running can be a real bear.

Automated Testing
✤ Once you have simulators (or physical devices) up and running you’ll
want to interact with them as little as possible.
✤ Automated test execution will be really important.
✤ TestSwarm was developed for this express purpose: Make it easy to
push tests out to a large number of clients (even mobile).

Platforms
✤ Symbian (S60 / UIQ)
✤ iPhone OS
✤ Blackberry OS
✤ Android
✤ Windows Mobile
✤ WebOS
✤ Maemo / Meego

Symbian

Symbian S60
✤ The most popular mobile OS - heavily used by Nokia.
✤ v5.0 is for touch screen devices (Equiv. to Safari 3.1)
✤ v3.0 is the latest for ‘regular’ devices (Equiv. to Safari 2.0)
✤ 2 ‘feature packs’ have been released
✤ The oldest, active, mobile browser that should be supported.
✤ Simulators available on Nokia.com.

Symbian S60
B
A B?

Symbian UIQ
✤ A now-dead implementation of the Symbian OS last released in 2008.
✤ Appears to still be in use, some what, but quickly becoming
irrelevant.
✤ Uses Opera Mobile (8.6, 8.65) as its built-in browser.
✤ UIQ is dead and Nokia doesn’t distribute the simulator any more. I
found a guy in Russia that has some extra copies (totally legit, heh).

Symbian UIQ
C C

iPhone OS
✤ Apple’s super-popular mobile OS
✤ Apple is very good about pushing
updates, almost all users are on the
latest OS version.
✤ Current with Safari 4
✤ A gotchya: Does not have fixed position support (making it difficult
to implement toolbars). Recommend: TouchScroll library.
✤ Simulator is part of the iPhone SDK.

iPhone Simulator
No 2.x
simulator!
B
A
A

Blackberry OS
✤ Blackberry continues to be enormously popular - and growing
rapidly.
✤ Ships with a custom browser, will be switching to a WebKit-based one
in 6.0.
✤ Anything older than Blackberry 4.6 is really frightening.
✤ Andrew Dupont calls 4.6 the “rubicon”.
✤ 4.6/4.7 have some strange quirks, 5.0 is pretty decent.
✤ Blackberry provides simulator downloads on their dev site.

Blackberry OS
B
B
B

Android
✤ Rapidly growing OS from Google.
✤ Tons of manufacturers are
modifying and shipping it.
✤ Expect Android to grow
drastically over the next couple
years.
✤ Lack of control has yielded
extreme version fracturing.
✤ Simulators are an easy download.

Android
A
A
A

Windows Mobile
✤ Windows Mobile 6.5 is the current release.
✤ Uses IE 6 as its rendering engine.
✤ Window Mobile 7.0 is coming soon.
✤ Uses IE 7 as its rendering engine. :-( :-( :-( :,(
✤ Window Mobile 6.1 is still relatively popular but is based off of IE 4.0
- this is a non-starter.
✤ Windows Mobile 6.5 simulator is an easy download.

Windows Mobile
7.0? :-(
F
B

WebOS
✤ Palm’s (HP’s?) Mobile OS
✤ Has a minimal amount of traction.
✤ Built off of WebKit, easy to support.
✤ 1.4 simulator ships with 1.3 browser (wtf!?)
✤ I’m testing using a physical Palm Pre.
✤ Palm Pre simulator is an easy download.
A

Maemo / Meego
✤ Linux-based OS used for tablets (and
potentially phones). Used by Nokia.
✤ Not very popular.
✤ Has a browser called ‘MicroB’ that C
uses Gecko.
✤ Mostly interesting as Fennec is
capable of running on it.
✤ Simulator requires Linux to run -
haven’t figured it out yet.

Platform-Independent Browsers
✤ A number of browsers target multiple platforms. Some work directly
with carriers (Opera, Netfront) whereas others provide downloads
(Opera, Fennec).
✤ Opera
✤ Fennec
✤ Netfront
✤ Phonegap (App Platform)

Opera Mobile and Opera Mini
✤ Hugely popular mobile browser (especially Mini).
✤ Available on a large number of platforms.
✤ Even ships as the default browser on some.
✤ Opera Mobile and Opera Mini couldn’t be more different.
✤ Mobile is a full-featured browser.
✤ Mini is a glorified bitmap viewer.
✤ Pulls from a proxy, no JS executing on client.

Opera Mobile and Opera Mini
C
A
C
Simulator is awesome!

Fennec
✤ Codename for Firefox on mobile
devices
✤ Released for Maemo, alpha release
out for Android (watch this!)
A B
✤ Equivalent to the latest releases of
Firefox Simulator is awesome!

Netfront
✤ Used on Playstation and N-Gage
✤ Download available for Windows Mobile.
✤ Highly crippled, custom, browser.
✤ Not worth supporting.
C
✤ Compatibility can be a real pain.

Phonegap
✤ Not a browser, a way to
develop cross-platform
applications.
✤ Uses WebKit as the rendering
engine.
✤ Use HTML/CSS/JS to
develop deployable apps.
A
✤ Quite popular, easy to
support.

Other Browsers
✤ Not worth the time for such small market share.
✤ Ozone (Uses WebKit)
✤ Openwave (Dead)
✤ Bolt (Uses WebKit)
C
✤ JIL (Uses WebKit, Widget Platform)

Summary
✤ What do we need to support? Roughly:
✤ Opera 9.5, 10
✤ Internet Explorer 6, 7
✤ Firefox 3.5+
✤ Safari 2, 3, 4
✤ (and Blackberry... weeee...)
✤ Don’t assume it’ll work, download the simulators and test!

What Devices to Buy?
✤ For A level:
✤ 1 iPhone 3GS: Latest running 3.x (* Watch for new 4.x iPhone)
✤ 1 iPad: Running 3.2
✤ 1 Nokia N97 Running S60v5
✤ 1 Palm Pre: Running 1.4
✤ 2 Android Phones: HTC Magic (1.5/1.6), Droid Incredible (2.1)
(* Watch for new 2.2 Android)
✤ And download the Opera and Fennec Simulators and Phonegap

A -Grade Costs
✤ $315 - iPhone 3GS
✤ $499 - iPad
✤ $370 - Nokia N97
✤ $399 - Palm Pre
✤ $349 - HTC Magic
✤ $637 - Droid Incredible
✤ Total: $2569

What Devices to Buy?
✤ For B level (in addition to A level):
✤ 1 1st Gen iPhone: Running 2.x
✤ 1 Nokia N96: Running 3.0v2
✤ 3 Blackberry Devices: Curve 8900 (4.6), 2x Tour 9630 (4.7 and 5.0)
✤ 1 HTC HD2: Running Windows Mobile 6.5

B -Grade Costs
✤ $315 - 1st Gen iPhone
✤ $360 - Nokia N96
✤ $310 - Curve 8900
✤ $350 x 2 - Tour 9630
✤ $600 - HTC HD2
✤ Total: $2285
✤
A -Grade + B -Grade: $4854

More Information
✤ Coming Soon at:
✤ http://jquerymobile.com/
✤ See also:
✤ http://testswarm.com/ and
✤ http://swarm.jquery.org/
✤ And:
✤ http://quirksmode.org/m/