More shoppers are accessing the Internet from mobile devices and while the total number of mobile Internet users is still very small, it is important to start thinking about designing and developing your projects to work well on mobile clients.

In fact, because mobile Internet access and mobile commerce offer so much potential for online merchants and developers, Ecommerce Developer will be hosting a webinar next week titled Mobile Commerce Site Development Basics. The webinar will provide an introduction to several mobile-site-development concepts important for successful design.

Preparing for that webinar reminded me that testing mobile site designs is even more complicated that testing websites for cross-browser compatibility. So with this challenge in mind, I have put together a list of mobile handset and mobile browser simulators that you can use to test your work.

iPhone SDK

If, in addition to building a mobile-optimized website, you plan to build an iPhone app, you may want to download the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK), which includes an iPhone simulator. But be warned, you'll be introduced to Objective C, the programming language used for iPhone apps. Also, you'll see that SDK costs $99.

iPhoney

Marketcircle's iPhoney is not a full-blown iPhone simulator, but rather it offers a Safari-powered web experience that is pixel-to-pixel accurate with the iPhone.

BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators

Developing websites or applications for BlackBerry users? You'll want to download the official BlackBerry smartphone simulators.

dotMobi Emulator

The dotMobi emulator lets you test your site on more traditional mobile phones.

Opera Mini Simulator

Opera Mini is arguably one of the most advanced mobile web browsers. That browser is getting a lot of use, so it is helpful that the company offers a free web-based emulator.

Fennec Emulator

Fennec, or Mobile Firefox, is another promising mobile-web-browsing solution, so be sure to check out this emulator.

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• Mobile Internet Devices to Drive More Fluid Designs
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This article is filed under Design & Development and has the following keyword tags: mobile, mcommerce, simulators, iPhone, BlackBerry.

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