Cross browser and platform website testing
Published by on November 27th, 2007
Testing your shiny new website across multiple browsers and multiple platforms for consistent design and layout can be tricky without a spare-room full of different machines and operating systems. Services such as Browsercam.com are superb, but a little on the expensive side if you are not a web developer pro.
Browsershots to the rescue! This is a free service which offers screen capture previewing of your web page across pretty much every browser and system in general use today. Free does come at a price, however, as when the network is busy, it can take well over half an hour to generate the screenshots. In the UK we have a time advantage. Using the service before the US web machine wakes up means generation of a single screenshot can take as little as three minutes when the network is not busy.
The time estimate given on your screenshot generation page is usually pretty accurate, but regardless of the generation estimate, your request will timeout after 30 minutes. At busy times this is nowhere near enough time. You get around this by extending the timeout by clicking a ‘extend’ button, which effectively restarts the timeout period for 30 minutes from the moment you pressed the button - your estimated screenshot generation time does not change. So if your estimate is 40 minutes, and your timeout 30 minutes, just wait 25-20 minutes, pop back to your screenshot page, and push that ‘extend’ button.
If priority screenshot generation is important for you, for 10 Euros you can have yourself the joys of priority generation for a whole month. That is significantly cheaper than Browsercam.com - though browsercam.com does offer a significantly broader range of services including VNC remote access to specifically configured machines, which would be essential for testing more than merely the interface and for accessing password-protected sites for testing privately.
You should consider that your Browsershots generated screengrabs are viewable by anyone accessing the public screenshots page. But even when the network is fairly quiet, the queue moves pretty fast.
Incidentally, the screenshots page is an interesting place to visit now and then to take a peek at what people are building.
