
Adobe launches Shadow, a new toolkit for mobile developers - diwank
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/adobe-launches-shadow-a-new-toolkit-for-mobile-developers/
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webmat
Gave it a spin, and unfortunately it won't replace a pure weinre for me.

The way to connect all devices is pretty polished, although the install is not
terribly clear. You need to install a local app on your dev machine
(presumably hosting weinre), as well as a chrome extension. Then you install
the Shadow apps on all your devices. Once that's done, connecting devices
works pretty well.

On the other hand it's for pure web browsing (the chrome extension is to
follow you around in chrome). So you obviously can't use it to debug a hybrid
app (e.g. PhoneGap). You can do that with a pure weinre.

Second, my devices sometimes lose track of where I am. This may or may not be
because of the next point.

Third, the devices following you around is entirely url-based. In other words,
it doesn't reproduce browser events (e.g. clicks, form submits, etc.), it
simply reloads the page completely when the url changes. I'm not saying it
should: desktop and mobile support different sets of events. However this
reduces its usefulness with single page load apps.

I almost mentioned ajax form submits as a case where its usefulness is
reduced. But it occurred to me that you'd probably rather enter your stuff
manually on every device anyway. This, paired with the fact that Shadow
doesn't try to keep all device in sync when you click around _on the devices_
(it only follows your chrome browser), actually makes it possible for one to
test these kinds of interactions.

With that said, I'll still keep an eye on this tool. I think it's pretty
promising.

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marknutter
What is a "pure weinre"?

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webmat
By that I mean installing the "weinre" tool locally (or using
debug.phonegap.com) and connecting your hybrid app or website yourself by
including the script tag in your html.

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cienrak
Nice to see Adobe adapting to the slow passing of Flash with interesting tools
for the new generation of mobile developers and their problems (device/os
fragmentation).

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talmand
Although I agree with your statement, this project has very little to do with
Flash. If anything at all. I would imagine Adobe would have considered such a
project regardless of the future of Flash.

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istvanp
I gave it a quick spin[1] but was a little disappointed that it needed to
manually be reconnected to the remote inspector on every page change. It's
also completely missing the Network stuff. That said, debugging CSS with this
works great.

Interesting side note: it's apparently using weinre[2] as the remote
inspector.

[1] Download from here: <http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/shadow.html>

[2] <http://phonegap.github.com/weinre/>

Edit: as I understand, the limitations come from weinre because it's
JavaScript based on the client side.

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5h
I've given it a quick go & am very impressed, relatively smooth experience for
a just-launched product, remote inspection, manipulation & js console is great

... tied up with selenium or similar to drive more complex interactions on my
desktop browser & have them mirrored by pushing javascript to my phone, could
make this a very powerful change.

edit: misread istvanp

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MatthewPhillips
I'm not near a computer I can test this on, does it allow you to remotely
debug javascript? Does it allow you to do so in multiple browsers (For example
on Android you have Android Browser, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera as different
rendering engines)?

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wtdominey
Gave it a go. Everything connected fine, but in my test it can't resolve to a
local hostname. So the stuff I'm developing locally doesn't display, which
kind of defeats the purpose.

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webmat
Try using localtunnel.com

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dutchbrit
What always amazes me is that companies like Adobe launch a new product, but
don't bother registering the domain - adobeshadow.com (DOH!!) - guess because
it's a free product?

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Ecio78
Maybe because in this way they have something to occupy the time of their
legal department (suing you, of course :D)

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lucian1900
So basically weinre + auto reloading, but for some reason not supporting
Linux.

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eazy_osm
Y no linux? :/

