> If you open this on a computer instead, you will have a chance to play with some emulators!
Instead of what? I was under the impression that the device I was on is a computer.
Edit: I was curious to understand what caused the site to show that box. From looking at the source and some interacting in the console, it seems to have been due to the 'isiOS' variable having the value 'true'. It was true despite the device not running iOS because '(navigator.maxTouchPoints && navigator.maxTouchPoints > 2)' was truthy, and window.MSStream wasn't. This device, a Surface Pro X, or more precisely the Chrome 139 browser running on it, reports 10 max touch points and doesn't have MSStream defined, and that appears to have been enough for it to be mistaken as a not-a-computer.
By now, after refreshing, I see an extra sentence 'Hey, site, you got it wrong. This is a real computer!' Perhaps the author saw this comment and added it quite quicky? If so, thank you!
And the emulator tracks whether you've done the things mentioned in the article, like open a particular control panel or tried a particular menu option.
This is amazing.
It's also confounding to see mysterious boxes all across the text, you'd wonder what those are, because hovering or clicking doesn't do anything, nor is there any mention of what's up with that...but apparently these are checkboxes. (which is not obvious, nor is it hinted at.) One would think these could be like, hovered on or clicked on to get to what's being talked about (which could be a great way to show visual examples), but that's not it. There's video, but the button for it is buried (or it relies on something already failing to load, and then the button might be almost unreadable because of how things are positioned on screen there). Video is neat, but still kinda worse and not as distinct in what it's trying to show, compared to a gallery of static images that'd show things in a focused way, instead of having to wait around or click through, wondering when does it get to the point and what is it trying to show...or whether the video is just stuck loading. That "details" button could've just been some way to switch right there between emulator/video/images, rather than burying those options and keeping you guessing. (Also, some of the heavier OS versions/emulators might straight up not load or have some trouble and just not be a good experience, so perhaps, why not be more upfront and let someone choose, maybe even right at the start)
geerlingguy•1h ago
Edit:
...and I completely missed that they're running live emulation!