Cross Browser Testing. Pick a browser, Pick an OS, Test website

http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

by drm237 • 18 years ago

62 47 18 years ago

crossbrowsertesting.com

sonink• 18 years ago

Awesome Stuff.

Extremely simple. Very Useful. Usability rocks.

You guys are going to make tons of cash from this.

craig-faber• 18 years ago

Great service. I'll probably use it. The demo is really well done. I'm impressed.

proximitycast2• 18 years ago

I liked the demo too. What did you use to create it?

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

Camtasia

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

Damn, one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments. Congrats guys!

carlos• 18 years ago

It works very well, little slow but is not speed what is intended to be tested. I tested my site with IE 5.0 ... awfull! :) I just missed the Mac OS , as only Windows and Ubuntu are available right now.

god2• 18 years ago

I choosed Vista plain install. All I get is a blank white screen. On top, it displays the % bar and two buttons.

r70002• 18 years ago

I had the same problem. But then I figured out.. you need to enable Java.

I get a lot of runtime errors in IE though. Worked great in FF.

god2• 18 years ago

Java! Interesting. I did not use that since the 90s.

Ok, I enabled Java and reloaded. Then I got "download missing plugins" in that formerly empty space. I clicked on it and then got a window saying "The following plugins are available: Java Runtime Environment". In the meantime, in the background, the page got dark and displayed something about the fact that my session timed out. Anyway, I clicked "next" to continue to install Java. Then I got a screen saying "Java Runtime Environment Not Available".

joanou• 18 years ago

No OSX support?

aflag3• 18 years ago

Yeah, there are three Windows versions and no macos :(. Does anyone even uses windows 98 these days?!

BTW, I've tried XP SP2 (base install) and win98 SE (version with ms jvm 1.1.4). Neither worked, a black screen shows then it says the login failed and says that's error 4096. It was because I had gcj plugin installed on my Debian instead of the sun plugin. It would be nice to have support to gcj, but having support to macOS is more important, I think.

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

Yeah someone else had the same problem with gcj. I will look at it.

bap• 18 years ago

I really like this and I agree, it's one of those forehead slapper idea's, obvious when you see it. Is it just me or is the pricing structure a little aggressive?

NateWeiner• 18 years ago

Really nice! I don't understand how anyone thought browser testing could be done with just images before.

scw• 18 years ago

Great idea. I've been using browsershots.org, which while cheaper only provides static images of pages. Sandboxing the entire machine is a clear improvement. A logical next step is automated testing to take advantage of these system configurations, something like Selenium.

goofygrin• 18 years ago

ok so I just tried site out.

Man, 30 minutes for my screenshots and one of them was completely blank (and it's not locally, so something was with the shot).

How slow would development be if you had to do that!

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

You hit on the exact reason why we started CrossBrowserTesting.com.

We are web developers too and browser shots did not do what we needed. Ajax just does not work well in the model. I think for static shots it does a good job. Our site has screenshots also but you can pick and choose where and when you want the screenshot.

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

This is tony from CrossBrowserTesting.com and we really love the feedback!

We really think with ajax this is the only way to do cross browser compatibility. Our site can do screenshots too but you have all the control.

Thanks for checking it out. We will take any feedback good or bad!

lomo2• 18 years ago

I tried it on 2 computers and 2 browsers (Firefox and Opera) and both did not work.

I really would like to try CrossBrowserTesting.com on CrossBrowserTesting.com to find out on which configuration it works...

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

Hey. Send us some feedback on the page when it is not working. Like which session and OS you were trying to run. We will look at it. thanks for trying it!

lux2• 18 years ago

For me, OSX + VMWare is my ideal testing environment. As virtualization comes into play more on desktops, that could marginalize the utility of a browser-based solution for this, although presently I think it's an idea that is definitely useful and price-wise they offer good value.

I haven't used virtualization on Windows or Linux much, how are those at testing other platforms? All the major browsers already run on Windows, but I've been bitten by differences in Firefox between Windows and OSX before (line heights were off), so multi-OS testing is still important.

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

You know what would really make this a killer app?

If I could post a URL I want to test in a form, and be able to select select what browsers I want to test that URL in. And, then, have a script run that would open that URL in each of the web browsers I want to test it in.

That would make a web designer's life much, much easier.

ks• 18 years ago

I think browsershots.org does that

lux2• 18 years ago

What would take browsershots.org to this level would be to include any JS/console errors and warnings and attach them as text to the screenshot. This would let someone test faster without having to load up a virtual OS.

Put an API on that too so you could integrate it with a testing framework or desktop component (AIR?) without going to the site, and charge incrementally like Amazon does with AWS...

Even with VMWare, I could see myself paying for that.

redorb• 18 years ago

browsershots.org - kills it I think. I don't know what the cost of operation is, but at most its a machine loaded with the different OS's and the different browsers (using commodity stuff probably under $1k) then the hosting bandwidth etc.. this is something that should be offered free to customers of your bigger service, this isn't a stand-a-lone product. imo

kleevr• 18 years ago

Just played with both. Browsershots is about as good as I'd expect for free. crossbrowsertesting allows interactive testing. Which suits it better for dynamic stuff.. imo

almost• 18 years ago

wow, impressive

Any plans to add OSX as well?

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

Yes we are working on it. Hopefully soon.

blacksquare• 18 years ago

I'll give it a try. I currently use browsercam (http://www.browsercam.com) and vnc into different platforms to test sites.

rams2• 18 years ago

browsershots.org is GPLd and does cross browser testing. Uses Python.

rams2• 18 years ago

oops, I meant browsershots is GPLd, not browsershots.org

jeremiah• 18 years ago

There is definitely a need for this service. Having machines running three OSes, and a plethora of browsers, on your desktop is not yet an option. While it certainly is possible to _have_ a server farm with all these OSes, why not just let someone else maintain that nightmare? Sysadmin hell is what I call that.

The service is slow, but that will change. It "just worked" for me running OS X 10.5 with Firefox 3b5 - I didn't even check if I had Java or which version my Java was, everything went smoothly. There were some artifacts from moving the mouse, but it let me view several of my pages and gave me some good views of how others see my sites.

I think the pricing model is reasonable.

Perhaps what you can do to extend the service is allow users to pay for a set of mouse movements, record them, and run them on every OS/browser/flash combination. Then allow customers to play those files back on their own machines at their leisure, instead of doing it in real time. This would allow a web developer a way to create a 'use case' for their page, and see how it behaved across various platforms. Also, you would not have to supply so much bandwidth, just compress the results and provide them for downloading later.

I'm a little disappointed in Hacker news for the negative comments on Java. While I don't write Java, and lots of my perl colleagues dis Java, I would have thought that this Lisp-centric community would be more tolerant and agnostic when it comes to choice of programming languages. After all, it the innovation of the final result that matters, not the tools used.

I wish you luck Tony with your service, I am sure it will be a success!

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

I completely understand the Java comments. For some it just works and for others not so much.

We do have some thoughts about adding the ability to record a session but that will come later we think, mac support is the next technical thing for us.

One other thing that is coming sooner rather than later is a client that we hope will help the "slowness" that you see through the java applet.

thanks again for the comments.

asmosoinio• 18 years ago

Worked for me, and seems like a great service. I will be using this in the future.

I'm working a lot with mobile phones, especially S60 Symbian stuff, so I have found Nokia RDA* very useful. I have wondered why something similar would not be available for website testing. Well, here it is!

*) http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/technical_services/testing/r...

aflag3• 18 years ago

If it's just vnc and the java applet is a vnc client (as it appears), why not let the person choose which vnc client to use? That would allow for greater flexibility and less pain for the guys mantaining the service. The java client could be there only for the people who rather use it that way.

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

We will be working on a client. The next thing is mac we hope, then we will be working on a client. Some people just like a client (myself included)

ardit33• 18 years ago

I think this is pretty expensive. Sometimes, you want to check things as you develop, so there might be needs for longer period of testing. You can easly run over 150 minutes a day, or even 500 minutes in two days.

Paying basocally just for an OS instance 50/in two days is a lot of cash.

# Credits Total time Cost Savings

1 5 minutes $1 -

6 30 minutes $5 17%

30 150 minutes $20 33%

100 500 minutes $50 50%

proximitycast2• 18 years ago

I think you'd add additional value if your configs also supported internet enabled mobile devices like the blackberry and others. Nice concept.

dc2k08• 18 years ago

apologies if this is a stupid question, but is there a way to test a site that is offline using this service?

tonetheman12• 18 years ago

No sorry you have to be available on the internet. In order for you site to be available to browse from our service it has to be available for anyone to browse. You could put it in a hard place to find... but yes it must be public and available.

Cross Browser Testing. Pick a browser, Pick an OS, Test website

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