iPad Emulator for Web Page Testing

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Level 1

9 points

iPad Emulator for Web Page Testing

I work as a freelance web designer and need a way to test my responsive web layouts on tablet devices (mainly the iPad).

Does anyone know a way I can test on an iPad without actually owning one? I've looked at various online emulators (e.g. http://ipadpreview.com/previewer, http://ipadpeek.com/) but they all seem useless, and often ignore responsive layouts and cannot replicate layout issues I've had seen on actual iPad devices.

I've heard I can use Xcode in order to use an iOS emulator, however after downloading / installing the app I cannot find any kind of emulator or see how to access it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Right now all I can think of is actually buying an iPad, but spending several hundred pound on a device purely just for website testing seems a bit overkill.

Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 27, 2012 9:22 AM

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Answer 1

K T

Level 7

23,889 points

Mar 27, 2012 9:30 AM in response to pealo86

>and cannot replicate layout issues I've had seen on actual iPad devices.

An actual device would seem to be the answer, I'd think.

If you find, download and install a compatible version of Xcode, you can run the simulator and do basic website testing. Just remember that the simulator is not an emulator - if you can't test on a device, your users will do that for you 🙂

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Answer 2

pealo86 Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 28, 2012 3:12 AM in response to K T

Thanks for the feedback.

How would I get to the simulator on Xcode? I tried creating an empty iOS project (as well as an empty OS X project) and couldn't find the simulator for the life of me!

I did manage to test a site on an iPad the other day (in the Apple store! haha) and noticed a couple of issues. So if these display in the Xcode simulator too then that would be great.

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