How To Test Your Website For Mobile Phones Using Opera Mobile Emulator

As a web developer, you should always test your website for compatibility with as many browsers as possible. While it is easy to test desktop browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome, not every one of us possesses a mobile handset for testing purposes. This is when an emulator comes to rescue.

Opera has released Opera Mobile Emulator, desktop version of their popular mobile browser. Opera Mini is widely used in iPhone as well as Android devices, due to it’s speed and performance. Now you can test your website rendering by downloading and installing Opera Mobile Emulator, which is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux (download links given below).

There is also an online version of Opera Mini Simulator, using which you can test your website without installing any software.

Install and run the program. You will find that the interface is the same as that of the mobile phone version. Enter the URL of the website you want to test in the address bar. You can use your Computer’s keyboard to type in the website URL. The emulator shows up a QWERTY keyboard, similar to it’s mobile counterpart.

entering-website-URL-opera-mobile-emulator

Once your website opens up in Opera Mobile, you can browse the links and pages on your site by using your mouse. Note that the scrolling of mouse may not work. So use the keyboard UP and DOWN arrows to scroll up an down. Or you can also hold down the LEFT mouse button, and drag the cursor to move around.

testing-website-opera-mini-mobile

Make sure you check your website’s mobile version. This is the version served by your server when it receives a request from a mobile user agent. There are some WordPress plugins that let you serve different versions, depending on the user agent.

Click on the Wrench icon at the bottom right of Opera Mobile Emulator, and click on ‘Settings’.

opera-mobile-settings