MakeUseOf » website mobilizer

Test Your Mobile Website With Opera Mobile Emulator

Justin Pot — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:31:19 +0000

Opera Mobile Emulator is a must-have testing tool if you’re designing a website. Whether you develop using Linux, OS X or Windows you can test how your site will function on a mobile device quickly and easily.

Designing websites for desktops is hard enough. Between Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and the infamous Internet Explorer web developers have always had their hands full. You need to ensure users of each browser can use your site. With the advent of widespread smart phones, though, the problem is even more complicated. You need to ensure your site looks and functions well on mobile platforms.

Opera Mobile Emulator gives you a way to do just that. This desktop program mimics Opera’s mobile version perfectly, allowing you to test a given site quickly and easily. It’s also pretty fun to use as a mini-browser, if you’re looking for something like that, so even non-developers can have some fun with this one.

There are a number of mobile browsers out there; Opera Mobile is just one of them. If you want to use it on your cell phone, I suggest you read more about downloading Opera Mobile. If you want to give this program a spin on your desktop or laptop, though, keep reading.

Getting Opera Mobile

Getting Opera Mobile isn’t all that difficult; just head over to the Opera developer page to find out all the information you need to. You’ll find downloads for Windows, Mac and Linux there.

Linux users having trouble installing the Mobile Emulator, rejoice! There’s a portable version that can run on every Linux distro over at PortableLinuxApps, a site we’ve profiled in the past. Check it out if you don’t want to bother dealing with installation.

Using The Program

Fire up the program and you’ll be presented with your most-visited sites. Start using the program and you’ll quickly realize that this interface is not meant for the desktop; it’s very much a phone design. That’s obvious enough.

You can change a few settings, but not many:

Tabs aren’t visible on screen; rather, they are a button-press away:

As you can tell, this program is very much identical to the phone version of Opera Mobile. If you really want to see what it’s about I suggest you read about the mobile version of Opera.

What It’s For

As mentioned before, this program is perfect for testing whether your website works well on mobile browsers. While it’s specifically meant to show you how your site will look on Opera Mobile, it can also give you a general idea of how your site will look on all such devices. My site JustinPot.com, for example, sports a fairly unique interface. It’s kind of weird, I know, but I like it for some reason. How does it work on a mobile browser?

My experience was not a good one. Looks like I’ll be in the market for a new WordPress theme within the next couple of weeks, or at least a good mobile plugin.

MakeUseOf does have a mobile version, however, and it works really well in Opera Mobile. Good to know.

Alternative Uses

Not really a web designer? You still might be able to have fun with this one. Mobile sites tend to be less cluttered than their desktop equivalents, so this browser could be a good choice for distraction-free reading. It’s also worth trying this browser out if you’re considering getting a smart phone; it’s a pretty good way to explore how the web will look on it.

Whatever you use Opera Mobile Emulator for, you have to agree that it’s cool of the Opera team to offer it. I enjoyed playing with it, and learned a bit about my own website in the process. You can too, so check it out!

As always let us know what you think in the comments below. Also feel free to ask for help, should you need it.

Create A Mobile Website From Your RSS Feed With WINKSite

Ryan Dube — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:31:12 +0000

One aspect of owning a website or a blog that few people think about is offering mobile content. The problem with forgetting about the mobile community is that mobile is the trend of the Internet. More people are checking Facebook, reading and responding to emails, and yes – reading their favorite websites right from their mobile phones.

In 2008, Aibek observed how quickly the mobile Internet was taking off. If you are looking to capture potential visitors wherever they are, then offering mobile content is the way to do that.

The problem is that not everyone has time to put together a mobile version of their website or blog.

In 2010, MakeUseOf began work on offering readers an updated mobile alternative. If you’re looking to offer mobile content, but you aren’t really comfortable or knowledgeable with the web coding required, an excellent option is to make use of WINKSite, a free service that instantly converts your RSS feed into a high quality mobile site.

Setting Up Your Mobile Site

Getting your mobile website set up is ridiculously easy, and requires zero programming knowledge. All you have to do is sign up for a free WINKSite account, and then from the dashboard click on “Create a Site.” The next screen is where you’ll set up an individual mobile site.

If you want to have your existing RSS feed used as the source for your mobile site content, make sure to click on “Blog” and fill in the link to the URL or your RSS feed URL.

The beauty of this service is that you can personalize the mobile site to look however you like. Adjust the color scheme and upload your own header photo. In my case I’ve uploaded the FWC logo and centered it at the top of the mobile site.

As you adjust the color and header settings, you can see a small preview of what the mobile site will look like in the right hand column. Once you’re done, you’ll end up on the dashboard page. Another awesome thing about WINKSite is the fact that there are so many available content types that you can create for absolutely free and add to your mobile site. These are things like a forum, a chat room, surveys and much more.

Adding Content To Your Mobile Site

While you could just allow your RSS feed to update your new mobile website automatically, you have the option to add new, unique content for your mobile readers only. For example, create a survey that will be featured in the “survey channel” in the link listings. Setting up a new survey requires that you fill out one simple form, and you’re done.

You can even create an Ezine to go along with your blog! All setup and content creating takes place on the WINKSite website, and again the entire process makes use of a very simple wizard. You can create the entire e-zine by packaging up several articles within one e-zine issue.

Fill out the forms to create each article within your e-zine, and you’re good to go. You can schedule the publication date at a later time, and you can make it so articles expire and are only visible publicly for a limited time.

As though all of these add-ons weren’t enough, you can also add a Forum channel to your mobile site, where visitors can post comments and have conversations that pertain to the content on your mobile website. This is a great way to build community around the topics that you publish on your site.

You can even issue “field reports” to your mobile blog by sending a text message or an email that gets posted to the site, depending how you configure it to work in your mobile blog Field Reports settings.

Once you’re finished setting everything up, check out your new mobile site by accessing the URL that was provided to you when you created the site. Here is what the main page of my FreeWritingCenter mobile site looks like on my Motorola Droid.

Click on any of the story titles, and you get a view of the RSS feed content. The display will look differently here, depending on whether you post an excerpt or the entire article to the RSS feed. In my case, I post an excerpt, so the visitor will have to click the link to view the entire HTML website. To be more compatible for all mobile phones, it would probably be better to post the entire article to the feed so they can view it from within your mobile site.

Overall, WINKSite is a useful resource for generating a version of your website that will display properly on mobile devices. It works well, and configuration is so easy that anyone can do it. It would be nice to have a little bit more control over the formatting and to have the ability to insert HTML into some of the forms, but for the most part it performs a valuable service for website owners, and it does it well.

Do you have a mobile version of your website? If not, give WINKSite a shot and let us know what you think!

Make Use Of Podcast #36: Meet Easier & iPhoneize Any Site

Jason Mayoff — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:01:05 +0000

Today on the show I take a look at some cool websites and tools as listed in Cool Websites and Tools (edition #197).

Listen to the podcast for some more information and insight than what’s available in our quick reviews.

This podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

[display_podcast]

Browsing Web on your Mobile Phone

Aibek Esengulov — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:34:06 +0000

The mobile web is starting to really take off. More websites started to offer mobile versions, new mobile apps released on a daily basis, mobile browsers getting better, etc. To sum up, more and more people access internet from mobile phones. If you got a blackberry, iPhone or any kind of smartphone, here are a couple of tools and websites to get you started.

OperaMini – Mobile Browser

Free web browser that works on pretty much any phone that has web capability. So far mobile browsing was way behind what you would normally get on your PC. OperaMini 4 changes that by enabling you to view the pages as they appear on your PC. Whether it’s an image or a flash video, it can auto adjust the content to your phone’s screen size.

As you can see in the image below, even crowded pages appear quite good. There is an option allowing you to zoom-in on any part of the page. Apart from that, it’s really fast. Almost two times faster and efficient (cheaper) than most of the other mobile browsers. You can see it in action and get detailed feaure list in our earlier OperaMini review here. To download Opera mini go here.

Another good mobile browser is Skyfire. Unfortunately the product is still in beta and available for download only to selected users. If you’re interested you can sign-up for invite from their website. Check it out in action on this Youtube video.

How to Mobilize your Favorite Websites

There are plenty of free services where you can mobilize RSS-enabled websites in no time. You don’t have to be a geek to create a mobile version of your blog and these tools can help you out. Your blog content won’t just look readable on a mobile phone screen, but will also load faster. Almost all of these apps require only RSS feeds. Add RSS feeds you want to mobilize, get a link to mobile-friendly page, add this page to your mobile bookmarks and done.

Google Mobilizer

The simplest mobilizer out there. Simply enter the address of the page and click go. If you are short on bandwidth there is a checkbox to disable the images as well. Read more …

Generate Mobile Page using Google Reader

Apparently Google Reader can generate a mobile view of any RSS feed without any effort. All you need to do is append the feed address to the following URL.
http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/[feed_address]. (via Digital Inspiration)

MoFuse

We have already covered MoFuse here.

Mowser

Read more at Mobilize any Website with Mowser.

Other web services that can help you with generating mobile websites are Andanza, Mippin and WireNode.

If all you’re looking for is a simple way to create mobile edition for your favorite websites then any of these should do.

Easily Create Mobile Websites with MoFuse

Travis Quinnelly — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:52:51 +0000

I’ve been sampling a new mobilization service called MoFuse lately and I have to admit, this web application is awesome. If you ever wanted to create a mobile version of your site, MoFuse is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Using MoFuse’s grow page, you can easily create a mobile version of any web site in a matter of seconds. And I mean literally seconds.

MoFuse in Action

MoFuse works by mobilizing your feeds. Sounds simple huh? Well, I assure you that the guys behind MoFuse are diligent to ensure that this application tickles your mobile fancy. They’ve included all kinds of features including an SMS widget, an automatic redirect script, automatic image resizing, fully compliant .mobi sites hosted entirely on MoFuse’s servers, and even the ability to brand your mobile site with your own logo.

Even if you don’t have feeds (but who doesn’t these days) MoFuse has provided a way…just create an account and add your static mobile content.

Customize your Mobile Content

Maybe you’re like me, and just not satisfied with the vanilla wrapper. Get your customize on!

Want to change your default “grow” generated domain name? No problem, sign up for an account and you’ll be able to change your URI to something more appropriate. Not enough? Keep customizing you can even add things like static text, links, RSS feeds and comments. They’ve even included the ability to change the colors of everything from the text to the header background. If that’s still not enough, you can now add your logo (scaled down to under 200px wide and 30px in height) to be the default header.

MoFuse also has an automatic redirect script you can place in the top of your website that will redirect mobile visitors to your MoFuse site automatically with no fuss. They’ll think you’re just that good, but you’ll know the truth…MoFuse’s handling this for you.

Little Quirks

When creating the mobile site for MakeUseOf.com, we ran into an issue with the redirection script not working. Through many-a-emails, and ultimately talking with David Berube (MoFuse’s Founder & Chief Architect) via IM, we figured out that there was indeed an issue with the way PHP was setup on the MakeUseOf server.

The MoFuse API (which is used to determine mobile devices) uses the PHP directive “allow_url_include”. Many hosts either disable this feature, or don’t allow this directive at all. Since MakeUseOf.com is on a dedicated server, we have the ability to enable this for this feature to work. If you have it, there are two methods to turn on this PHP directive.

.htaccess – Edit your .htaccess file on your webserver and add the following: php_flag allow_url_include On
php.ini – This will either require you to be a server admin, or require your host to turn this feature on for you in your php.ini file.

If you don’t have access to this, you might just ask your host for this. All they can do is say no, right?

Wrap-Up

MoFuse gets an A+ for ease of use and in the end result product. While I had a little bumpy ride trying to get the mobile MUO site going (the whole redirect issue), the end result is great. If you browse to www.makeuseof.com from a mobile device you’ll see the mobile site automatically. Those of you who just want to see it, can visit m.makeuseof.com in your normal browser and the good guys at MoFuse will emulate a mobile device for you.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, WordPress lover and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

Mobilize any Website with Mowser

Travis Quinnelly — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:38:24 +0000

The mobile web is really taking off. There are a ton of startups exploiting this very market, and it’s only going to get more and more competitive.

With lots of mobile users in the US, unlimited internet and wi-fi enabled phones; browsing the web can be quite the experience. If you don’t have Opera on your phone, chances are you’re using a crappy built-in browser that rarely, if ever, renders pages correctly. That’s where Mowser steps in.

By mobilizing web content, Mowser delivers perfect pages for your phone of popular websites. While you can input any web address in there and Mowser will do a fairly good job of converting it, my experience with it is that if you type in RSS feeds of websites, you’ll get a much better return.

As you can see above, the one on the top is browsing MakeUseOf Feedburner feed, while the one on the bottomght is viewing MakeUseOf website. It doesn’t take much more than a quick glance to figure out which one makes for the more mobile friendly site! Also, all the links clicked from within the Mowser site will also be mobilized. Bonus!

Mowser has also added other features that might interest you. As you saw from the home page screen shot above, they also offer topics such as subscribing to popular tag feeds, free games, mobile directory, the tech 100 (powered by TechMeme’s top 100 technology blogs), top 100 politics, and the top 100 search engines made easy by using keywords directly into the site.

Do you have any thoughts about better web page mobilizers out there? Share them with us!

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

12 No-crap Tools to Make Your Blog Better

Aibek Esengulov — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 04:21:08 +0000

Got a blog ? If so this post is for you: 12 truly useful tools and widgets that can make your blog better. All listed services work on any blog, whether it’s a WordPress, Typepad, or a hosted Blogger blog. Enjoy!

1. Amung.us – Amung.us is a tiny real-time traffic analytics widget for your blog. It tells you (and your readers) how many people are currently on the website, what pages they’re reading, where in the world they’re coming from, and more. See our Amung.us widget below:

2. Conduit – Got a niche focused blog? If so, why not to offer a custom toolbar? Enable your readers to follow-up on latest posts, search your blog, have one click access to related resources/tools and more directly from the toolbar. I am not going to dwell much into it but this is definitely a must-have. It’s really hard to convince someone to get your toolbar but if you can implement it properly it can be a major plus. I am still working on our own, and I am quite sure it will be a big addition to MUO.

3. MoFuse – Take your blog mobile. This free service lets you create mobile version of your website in a matter of minutes. All you need is a working RSS feed. Once created MoFuse can automatically detect and redirect mobile readers to a mobile version. [Demo Video]

4. SiteMeter – Comprehensive real-time website traffic counter and analytics. Follow-up on latest referrals, entry/exit pages, visitor details, visits/pageviews ratio, and a lot more. Check out MakeUseOf’s sitemeter counter here.

5. Google Analytics – Google Analytics will fill-in the parts that you won’t get with Sitemeter. It’s by far the best analytics program out there, and what’s even better is it’s free. It has everything: detailed referral reports, click heat maps, email alerts, individual page performance stats, user bounce rates, campaign tracking, and lots more. See full feature list here.

6. BlogRush / AdGridWork – Both of these networks work as “ad exchange” programs where you can earn free promotion credits in exchange for displaying non-obtrusive relevant network ads on your own website (mostly as widgets). The more traffic your website gets the more credits and referrals you earn. [Demo Video]

7. PubMatic – PubMatic allows bloggers to make maximum off their website’s advertising space by automatically placing highest performing ad units on each page. It scans multiple ad networks (Google Adsense, YPN, ValieClick, etc.), diggs into ad performance reports and shows ad units with highest payout and performance. It’s completely free, there are no charges or commissions. [Demo Video]

8. MyBlogLog – High chance you already have this one, but in case you don’t, definitely get it. There are two ways you can learn about your loyal readers, one is comments, and the other is MyBlogLog. I learned about many MUO fans this way: zia, pax, pster, mklopez, … . Btw, if you haven’t joined MakeUseOf community already, you can do so here.

9. FatFreeCart – Free shopping cart solution for your blog. It’s simple to implement (simply copy-paste) and works perfectly both with PayPal and Google Checkout.

10. Kontactr / Contactify – Both services let you create secure online ‘contact’ forms and embed it on your own blog. Or just link it from your blog using “˜contact’ link.

11. AddThis / ShareThis (WordPress) / Madcast (Blogger, Typepad) – Let your visitors bookmark / save your posts to various social bookmarking sites, or forward as links via email.

12. Web2PDF – Free HTML to PDF conversion service for your website. Allows your readers to instantly print and save any article as PDF file. We publish lots of lists on MUO so it’s not really that useful for us, but in case you got plenty of lengthy posts than this is something your readers should appreciate. Read more about it here

That’s about it. Got anything to add? Let us know in comments.