Tonight at MAX, is Meet the Teams night. Come join us for this annual informal gathering of product managers, engineers, and product marketing teams to network and discuss the products you work most closely with.
Meet the Teams happens on Monday, May 6, 7:00-8:30pm.
A common support request that we field is users wanting the ability to use Edge Inspect with locally hosted WordPress installations. Because WordPress writes out links and image files using absolute URLs, when you try to preview your content using Edge Inspect everything looks broken.
I had previously published a very kludgy tip to work around this, but thankfully a better solution has since come along.
The Root Relative URLs plugin for WordPress will take those absolute paths that WordPress likes to write out, and change them into relative paths on the fly. This makes it easier to switch between development and production environments, and more importantly for us, makes your locally hosted WordPress site render well on Edge Inspect clients.
You’ll also benefit if you’re testing your local WordPress site using something like LiveReload, CodeKit, or Charles Proxy.
Installing the plugin is easily done through the WordPress plugin interface. Many thanks to the authors of this very useful plugin.
Duane O’Brien
Sr. Computer Scientist, Edge Tools & Services
Twitter: @duaneobrien
At Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Stephen Gates (Vice President and Creative Director for Global Brand Design) and his digital design team are constantly coming up with new ways to best show off their 9 hotel brands. They’ve managed to accelerate their production and gain buy-in from a dispersed global team of designers/developers, strategists and stakeholders – but how? Their entire design studio and clients have started using Adobe Edge Inspect.
Starwood customers are accessing hotel, location and accommodation information on many different devices these days. Stephen and his team have a goal to ensure that the mobile web experience is optimal, consistent and fantastic every time – unique to each brand – whether it applies to Westin or W Hotels.
We have been getting some feedback and kudos directly from Stephen about Edge Inspect, and I wanted to share some of his thoughts and insights here as he and his team celebrate the launch of their 9 new mobile web sites.
Congratulations to you and your team Stephen, and thank you for sharing your stories with our readers!
Bruce Bowman: How have you and your teams used Edge Inspect?
Stephen Gates: We have found great success in using Edge Inspect two different ways – the first was in the design and development of mobile experiences on multiple devices but also using it to present our design work to our internal clients.
SG: From the design and development perspective we just launched new mobile web sites for our 9 brands in 7 languages and Edge Inspect was key for us to be able to produce that much work in a short amount of time. Our process keeps the entire team involved through the entire life of the project so we need other designers, IA’s, developers, project managers, strategists and all of the team to see the designs and the code as it is being developed. There is no substitute for things like how we don’t need to do full prototypes; we can just load flat images in a quick HTML file. Design ideation and iterations are able to progress incredibly fast since we are able to work like this. Once that work was done we also found it invaluable to then be able to present our work, whether it was static JPEG’s or code, to our clients on an actual smartphone so they could have real interactions with it.
BB: What other tools have you tried while testing on mobile devices?
SG: There are browser plugins to mimic screen resolutions, apps that mirror design files from your laptop onto a device and even websites like Responsinator – but none of those really solved the problems we were trying to tackle as well as Edge Inspect did.
BB: When did you start to use Edge Inspect for presentation and reviews?
SG: As a company we moved to designing mobile first about two years ago and both our design and development teams started using Edge Inspect in mid-2012. The development team was using it to help with the coding of our new mobile web sites and my design team was having a problem because when you are designing any mobile experience there is no substitute for being able to see your design on the actual device. We were also having problems because we found some clients would really like a design when they saw it on a big screen but didn’t love it nearly as much when they saw it on an actual device.
SG: Trying to solve these problems made us take a step back to look at our design process and we realized that to be successful we couldn’t just be smart – we also had to be agile. We had to change the way we were working and presenting to be able to quickly see our designs on real devices while we were working on them; we had to test interaction designs by building quick prototypes; and then we had to present that work to our clients in a completely new way so our clients could experience our designs on a device rather than just looking at it from a distance on a larger screen.
SG: Making this change made a huge difference in the creation of our new mobile web sites. It was great when we worked with our amazing developers on building these sites and could see the code on multiple devices simultaneously. It was pretty awesome to see the whole team show up to meetings, pull out their device, open Edge Inspect and see the room full of people going through the designs in real-time, in real size on their own devices.
BB: Was it difficult for you and your teams to convince your organization to adopt Edge Inspect as a standard?
SG: Not that difficult at all because while we are designing and developing it works across platforms and we had to have something like that since everyone on the team has their favorite tools and editors. We have now switched over so that all design reviews for my team and for the entire Starwood mobile team are being done with Edge Inspect. When we decided to roll this out we either emailed everyone ahead of time to install the app on their devices or just took a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to get it done. After that everyone knew how we were going to be presenting work so they showed up with the app ready to go. Couldn’t be easier and we love it.
Stephen has shared a more complete set of images of their recent work on his Behance portfolio.
For more information about Starwood Hotels & Resorts see https://www.starwoodhotels.com and you can follow Stephen on Twitter: @sdgates or read his Blog for inspiration & ideas: http://blog.stephengates.com/.
Do you have a story about how you’ve benefitted from Edge Inspect? We’d love to hear it, so please leave a comment or get in touch.
Bruce Bowman
Sr. Product Manager, Edge Tools & Services
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
I’ve got a way for you to save $300, and get a free 1 year membership to the Creative Cloud – come see us at Adobe MAX! Use registration code MXSM13 and register soon.
In this session, I will show you how you can use Edge Inspect in your mobile web workflows. We will give an in-depth demo of Edge Inspect, and show you how you can use it with other great testing tools to make your mobile web workflows more fun and efficient.
In this hands-on Lab session, Edge Inspect engineer Duane O’Brien will guide you through the setup process for Edge Inspect, and walk you through some workflows that you’ll be able to put to use in your own projects immediately.
Andre JAY Meissner takes on a daunting topic – how do you do manage to choose which devices to test on, and gives you lots of tips for being smart, thorough, and efficient. This talk is terrific, and gets better each time Jay delivers it.
In this session, you’ll break out your laptop, your device (iOS, Android, Kindle Fire), and the browsers for those devices and get a hands-on introduction to the Edge Inspect features you need to know guided by Ray Camden, Adobe evangelist.
The rest of the session line up is going to be pretty great too, with lots relevant content and terrific speakers. Plus, MAX is a blast – we hope to see you there!
Bruce Bowman
Sr. Product Manager, Edge Tools & Services
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
Look for an update notification in the Edge Inspect Chrome Extension, with a link to download the new version. Our Android and iOS clients have also been updated.
This new version includes bug fixes, accessibility improvements, and the final work needed to complete our Japanese localization.
For the accessibility improvements in this new release, we partnered with Adobe’s Accessibility team who provided us with code, and expert guidance. Read more about it on the Adobe Accessibility Blog.
Update: This version has a noteworthy change: When you first launch the new Edge Inspect desktop application, it presents a dialog saying that the Edge Inspect Chrome Extension is trying to connect, and asks you to allow the connection. It is a very quick step, but is required for the Edge Inspect Chrome Extension to be able to talk to the Edge Inspect desktop application.
We hope you’re enjoying using Edge Inspect. Please take the time to provide our team with feedback through one of the following methods:
Bruce Bowman
Edge Inspect product manager
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
Let’s review the mobile browser cache in Edge Inspect, why it exists and how and why you would want to clear it.
A website is actually a composition of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of files. Even websites supremely optimized for speed are downloading many files so your browser can render them locally. The first time a site is downloaded, its files are saved into the browser cache. The next time the site is loaded the browser and server negotiate; only the changed assets are fetched. The browser uses unchanged files from the cache, which can have a dramatic impact on the page load time. The mobile browser in Edge Inspect also makes use of caching.
Mobile browser caches are notoriously sticky – meaning they hold on tight to assets that should be replaced by newer ones. This causes a lot of problems (and frustration) when you’re developing your site, frequently making changes and refreshing the browser to check your work. Clearing the cache on a mobile device can mean having to traverse several levels deep into the settings to find the control that clears the cache. And those controls are often in different places on different devices, adding to the time and frustration – just to test a simple change!
Edge Inspect provides the Refresh All Devices feature to clear the cache for all connected devices. With a single click on this button, each device’s cache will be cleared, and the page will be reloaded with the freshest assets. This feature is simple, efficient and time-saving, especially when using multiple devices. If you’d like to test a change on just one device, Edge Inspect provides a device specific Refresh command. You’ll find the Refresh button in the Action menu in the upper right corner of your device. (If you are viewing full screen on your device, you’ll need to toggle off full screen in order to see the Action menu.)
I hope you are more productive using the Refresh All Devices command in Edge Inspect!
Archna Panwar
Software QE Developer
Edge Inspect team
Today we released updates to The Edge Inspect Chrome extension, iOS and Android clients that include Japanese localization, bug fixes and some minor improvements. Please note that the Edge Inspect application that runs on your Mac or Windows computer has not yet been localized into Japanese. We will be releasing a new version early in 2013 that will display Japanese UI.
Please help us raise awareness for Edge Inspect by telling a friend. We have a couple of new videos that will help them see the value in just a few minutes. This introduction from Paul Trani is a great overview, and this screencast from Christophe Coenraets demonstrates the power of the features. Finally, the December 2012 issue of INSPIRE magazine has a story about Edge Inspect.
Season’s Greetings from the Edge Inspect team!
Bruce Bowman
Edge Inspect product manager
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
Today a new version of our Edge Inspect iOS app is available that has a few notable changes:
For those of you that have Edge Inspect installed on an iOS version 4.0+ lower than 4.3, your Edge Inspect client will continue to work, but can no longer be updated. If you have a device that is running one of these older OS versions, but have not yet installed Edge Inspect, you will need to upgrade your OS to at least iOS 4.3 to be able to install Edge Inspect. For more information on this, please visit the Edge Inspect Community Forum.
Bruce Bowman
Edge Inspect product manager
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
We are aware of some problems you may be encountering when attempting to purchase Edge Inspect. The Creative Cloud team is working on improving the purchase flows, and making the whole process more clear.
Until we get there, here are some more direct links to help you get where you need to go to make a purchase or download Edge Inspect.
If you are content with just one concurrent device connection at a time, the Edge Inspect free version may be all that you need. A free Creative Cloud membership is required, then you can download and use Edge Inspect in free mode. Go to the Creative Cloud Plans page and choose the Get Started option.
If you’re interested in purchasing the Edge Inspect subscription, visit: http://adobe.com/go/edgeinspect_upgrade. Choose the Store in the region where you live to start your purchase.
If you want to purchase Edge Inspect as part of the Creative Cloud, you can join the Creative Cloud by going to the Creative Cloud Plans page and choosing Complete. In addition to all of the Creative Suite tools and services, your Creative Cloud subscription also includes Edge Inspect and the other Adobe Edge Tools and Services.
If you’re already a Creative Cloud subscriber, you will not find Edge Inspect in the Adobe Application Manager. Instead, go to the Creative Cloud Apps page (make sure you’re logged in), scroll down to the Edge Tools and Services section, find Edge Inspect and click on Learn More, then Download.
Bruce Bowman
Edge Inspect product manager
twitter: @brucebowman, @edgeinspect
The Edge Inspect team provides a weinre server running in the Adobe Creative Cloud that the Edge Inspect Chrome extension uses by default when you choose the remote inspection option. This may not be a viable option for some people for a number of reasons:
With that in mind, we have created some instructions in the Edge Inspect Community Forum to help you get up and running with your own instance of weinre to use with Edge Inspect. Enjoy 
Mark Rausch
Sr. Computer Scientist
Edge Inspect team