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Adobe Shadow makes it easy to test your site on multiple devices at the same time. Photo: Adobe
To try out Adobe Shadow, head on over to Adobe Labs and grab the desktop app and Chrome browser plugin, along with the Android and iOS offerings.
If you've never tried testing your site simultaneously on multiple devices, the fact that Shadow consist of four separate apps should give you some idea of how difficult it generally is. Thankfully, once you have all the pieces installed, Shadow makes the rest of the testing process as simple as hitting refresh. In fact, much of the time you don't even need to do that — Shadow will automatically mirror whatever you're doing on the desktop to the rest of your connected devices.
Though it's still a beta release, Shadow may well be the most useful thing Adobe has ever built for web developers, particularly those that have embraced responsive design. It's no secret that, while responsive design allows developers to easily target a wide range of screen sizes, it adds a considerable amount of work to the development process. But with Shadow mirroring your website across dozens of devices at the same time, testing becomes simple and easy. It's a bit like synchronized swimming for web browsers. You can even debug and make changes directly in Chrome and then see the results on each device. To get an idea of how Shadow works, check out this overview video from Adobe:
There are two small problems with Shadow. The primary problem is that Shadow will only test your site in WebKit mobile browsers. We'd hate to see Shadow become yet another reason for developers to ignore non-WebKit browsers. So, while Shadow is great, it won't give you the whole picture right now.
The good news is that Shadow is a beta release and a work in progress. I spoke with Bruce Bowman, Senior Product Manager of Shadow and, while he stopped short of committing to anything, Bowman made it clear that Adobe plans to keep expanding Shadow's capabilities as the project progresses.
The other problem with Shadow isn't actually a problem with Shadow directly, but its usefulness is nevertheless directly related to the number of iOS and Android devices you have on hand. Obviously those that will benefit most from Shadow are large web development shops with the budget to invest in dozens of mobile devices. Shadow is no less handy for individual developers with only one or two devices, though the results are of course limited.
Should Shadow prove popular, perhaps it will help spur the sort of device swap gatherings we've heard mobile expert Peter Paul Koch suggest — a group of web developers pool their resources, bring together a wide range of mobile devices and take turns testing websites. Shadow could make that process considerably easier and faster thanks to its live editing capabilities.
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