Now I'm not sure how behind I am on the times, but I've just stumbled upon a pretty useful application for the Mac platform called iPhoney. I inadvertently found this while looking for iPhone templates to display a design comp for one of our special projects.

Produced by Market Circle, iPhoney is a simple, open-source web UI emulator for the iPhone, powered by the best browser on the world on Mac OSX. The website mentions that it works best with Safari 3 Beta, so chances are a lot of people have probably already seen (and or use) it. For noob-piles like me who haven't, feel free to continue reading.

iPhoney looking epic on an Apple desktop

The Good

iPhoney's core purpose is to demonstrate websites nested in an iPhone interface. The features are simple and precise. The application sits as a window on the desktop in the shape of, well... you guessed it, an iPhone. The UI contains basic browser controls such as a URL bar, back, forward, and refresh. It also has various aesthetic controls that are disabled, such as bookmarks and general iPhone controls. Since the application is meant to emulate websites, it seems like this is the best way to go. Fundamentally it just feels like an iFrame, with the iPhone UI as the parent.

The application comes with some slick tricks as well. You can change the orientation between Portrait and Landscape, and the display of the website adjusts accordingly.

Viewing mobile Youtube in landscape mode, on my amazingly gray desktop

According to Market Circle, iPhoney is "pixel accurate", which means that though it appears larger on your desktop, it still packs in the exact same number of pixels as the iPhone, showing exactly the same web content, including where the screen fold lies, how text wraps, and how large graphics appear.

The Not So Good

Some issues (lack of features, really) impact the ability to use this as a replacement platform for developing mobile versions. Since it only simulates the window display via screen, it doesn't correctly differentiate between appropriate style sheets for mobile. This means that any development testing through this must only parse the mobile styles. A lot of websites normally provide this via sub-domain such as m.facebook.com, or m.cnn.com.

It also doesn't differentiate header information, so if you attempt to visit a fancier website that parses based on HTTP headers and then redirects you, such as m.nytimes.com, then you're SOL.

Forcing Best Practice

Either way, the not-so-good can be seen as a gift, since it will force you to develop for best practices. A lot of Blackberry devices can't differentiate between Screen and Mobile either (at least not by default), so providing a sub-domain that parses only the mobile style sheet is definitely the way to go. iPhoney works great in testing this scenario.

Conclusions

If you haven't tried it, try it. Especially if you don't have access to an iPhone. It's great for quick mobile demonstrations to clients, stakeholders, and fellow employees.