How to test your website's iPad readiness

The iPad is finally here and in the hands of 300,000 people already. Given it's popularity and growth website owners will want to make sure their websites are ready for the iPad. Also remember there is no flash support on the iPad and videos are played using HTML5 format.

iPad Peek is a tool for you to view your site on an iPad without actually owning one. The problem with this little tool is that flash works on it but technically it should not. 

To fully test your website's iPad readiness you need to.

Step 1: Start your Firefox (or Safari) browser and change the user agent string to that of the Apple iPad. You may use Google Chrome as well but it just takes lot of effort  to change the user agents in Chrome.

Step 2: Disable the Adobe Flash plug-in from your browser settings.

Step 3: Open iPadPeek.com and type the URL of any website in the built-in Safari browser of the “virtual” iPad.

This tool will render websites in landscape mode by default but you can click the top edge of the iPad image to switch the page orientation from landscape to portrait mode and back.

The screen resolution of your current desktop is probably much higher than a iPad (which is 1024-by-768 pixels) so this tool may not exactly simulate iPad’s web browser but its as close as you can get without the real thing.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Is your website Apple iPad ready?

Apple has made it's stance very clear. They believe Flash is an outdated standard. And have been urging web developers to use HTML5 rather than flash for video playback.


Apple have launched their list of iPad ready websites which include CNN, Reuters and the New York Times. Web site developers are also urged by Apple to get their websites iPad ready. 



CBS and ABC are reportedly preparing television episodes to be viewed on the iPad -- CBS shows through HTML5 in the browser and ABC shows through a native iPad app. Hulu, a video site own by NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Walt Disney Company, is said to be preparing an iPad application.
And Netflix, the video rental service, appears to be preparing an iPad app that will allow subscribers to stream a limited selection of movies on Apple's eagerly anticipated device.
A company spokesperson declined to confirm this report and said, "Let's wait and see what Saturday brings."
YouTube, the most popular online video site, is not among those cited by Apple as iPad-ready, despite the fact that it does offer an HTML5 video player that works in Apple's Safari browser.
It's possible that YouTube wasn't mentioned because it's owned by Google, a company that has aggravated Apple by moving into the mobile phone business. But it could also be that YouTube's HTML5 player remains an experiment and that the bulk of its videos continue to be served in a Flash player.

An original post by

Sociolatte