I’m a developer at a business software company. We need to include iPads in our list of supported web clients. We’re not allowed to enable access from the Internet to our development servers; and we can’t set up WiFi. As far as I can see there’s no way to enable wired LAN access on an iPad. This will make it difficult to test stuff.

Anyone been in a similar position and have any tips? There’s not a huge budget for this – I can get an iPad but (probably) can’t stretch to a Mac.

I haven’t been in this position but I’ve developed web apps aimed at iPad. Only suggestion is to use Safari as your target browser as that seems to best reflect the iPad browser. If I remember correctly then either chrome or safari (possibly both..) also has functionality to emulate touches too. Still going to be not ideal though!

Isn’t google brilliant…

Isn’t google brilliant…

That does help but a word of warning, it isn’t a perfect emulation of the browser itself in my experience, there are still some actual different browser quirks etc…

I’m a developer at a business software company. We need to include iPads in our list of supported web clients. We’re not allowed to enable access from the Internet to our development servers; and we can’t set up WiFi.

Simple solution: sack your IT team and get in one that can support your needs properly!

Sounds like you need to set up in an internet cafe with wifi. All drinks on expenses. I’m a one man band so my budget is even smaller, I just check my website in the apple store when I’m in town 🙂

VPN in from internet over wifi or 3G?

Not sure what the issue is with a properly controlled wifi hotspot either.

any laptops in the area ? Surely the simplest thing to do is to create an ad-hoc hotspot from a machine on the network then disable it when you are done…

Alternatively; refuse to support them unless the IT peeps sort you out with the tools to do your job.

Spoofing a Mobile Safari user agent in Safari won’t be much use to you

Sure you’ll be routed to mobile versions of some of the more popular sites but its not going to emulate the ipad version of Safari

Basically this:

Alternatively; refuse to support them unless the IT peeps sort you out with the tools to do your job.

If they can’t stump up a few quid for a wireless router and get someone with half a brain to lock it down or let you do it yourself then you can’t support them.

I believe the iOS SDK comes with an emulator for apps but I’ve no idea if it includes a mobile Safari emulator. Also the SDK will only run on OSX, so you’ll need a mac….

You’re the “tech guy” man up and tell them straight.

(for what its worth you have my sympathies, I have to deal with shit like this ALL the time)

The iOS SDK does let you run Safari within the emulator, although creating certain events like pinch are a bit of a pain.

TBH, so long as you are following reasonably modern development practices; html5, RWD etc, I very much doubt you are going to notice any issues. Safari on iPad is really rather good…

Rachel

It can be done on a Mac, but there are a few hoops to jump through (I know, I’ve recently had to do it).

I use a MacBook at work which is running Apache which you will need to act as a local web server.

To connect to the local web server on your Mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing and select Internet Sharing. Next, click AirPort options and set Channel to “Automatic”, enter a password (5 chars for 40-bit WEP encryption or 13 chars for 128-bit WEP. Now select your WEP key length (I’m using 40-bit WEP).

Click Internet Sharing checkbox and select Ethernet in the “Share your connection from:” menu and select the “AitPort” checkbox in the “To computers using:” list.

In order to access you site you need to put your code in the “Users/[yourname]/Sites/” directory which you can then get to using something like http://127.0.0.1/yoursite/

This is pretty vague and there is a lot more you can do and google is your friend.

Hope this points you in the right direction.

It can be done on a Mac, but there are a few hoops to jump through

I think if the OP is not allowed to set up a wifi network that probably includes setting up an ad-hoc wifi network.

Simple solution: sack your IT team and get in one that can support your needs properly!

A few comments along these lines. But there’s nothing the IT team can do. We have a number of ‘senstive’ customers who specify what we can do on our networks – and WiFi, properly locked down or not, is not allowed.

VPN in from internet over wifi or 3G?

Now you mention this, I’m not sure why I discounted it before. I’ll need to talk to our IT Team about getting my development server put on the front end of our ‘Check Point’ VPN. I see there’s an iPad app from Check Point.

Oh, forgot to say that to connect your iPad to your Mac, on the iPad go to Settings > Wi-Fi and your Mac should appear in the list of networks available. Select your Mac and enter teh password your created previously. You should be able to browse to your Mac web server now.

Sorry GrahamS… just a bit eager to share the knowledge, I didn’t fully read the OP.

Simple solution: sack your IT team and get in one that can support your needs properly!

He’s got a point you know.

Absolute worst case they could supply a dev server just plugged into an old wireless access point (or even an old wireless ADSL router). Doesn’t even have to touch the corporate LAN if they are that hopeless at locking things down. Server could be a desktop/laptop PC, virtually anything would run IIS/Apache/Whatever acceptably. Do your build, then ship the code (sneakernet) to the Prod servers.

EDIT: Just read your reasons, fair enough if it’s contractural.

I looks like it’s possible to share your Mac internet connection/local web server using a direct USB connection between your Mac and iPad/iPhone. Could be worth investigating.

Have your ‘IT Team’ not heard of firewalls?

How about using Bluetooth to access the network (internally?), then route through to the dev boxes?

(Or is Bluetooth out too?)

I looks like it’s possible to share your Mac internet connection/local web server using a direct USB connection between your Mac and iPad/iPhone. Could be worth investigating.

Now that is interesting – could be the driver for getting a Mac. I can’t find out how to do it on support.apple.com although can see a few references to it in Google.

(Or is Bluetooth out too?)

I’m sure it would be.

Doesn’t look like there is the required USB networking drivers on the iPad?

I’ve only done a quick search but it looks like you can “reverse tether” your iPad to a Windows 7 PC too… possibly.

http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7214306_reverse-tether-iphone-pc.html

there’s nothing the IT team can do. We have a number of ‘senstive’ customers who specify what we can do on our networks – and WiFi, properly locked down or not, is not allowed.

Yeah but you don’t do it on your network – you create a new safe isolated network that is not connected to the main network in any way.

e.g. only thing on the network is some old box running your apache server (or whatever) as brassneck suggests.

Yeah but you don’t do it on your network – you create a new safe isolated network that is not connected to the main network in any way.

I don’t want a separate development environment. I need to be able to check that anything done in development works on an iPad. I’m not even permitted to access the dev svn server from the DMZ. I can get stuff from Dev to a DMZ-based server but it’s a non-instant; and I’m not allowed to move the data (not software) from Dev to DMZ – so replicating possible issues is harder.

Anyway, our IT team have moved with unseemly haste and put my server on the VPN, I’ve loaded up the VPN app, and I’m in on iPad over the VPN.

greaseham – iPhone != iPad