* Browsershots: A social content testing system
When you’re developing Web content and you want the widest possible audience you’re going to have to make sure that whatever your Web site displays can be viewed in as many browsers and variants of those browsers as possible without problems.
You could, of course, install all of the browsers on several local machines (to do the job properly you’ll need Windows, OS X, Linux, and BSD), but that is going to be quite a task if you’re going to prepare for as many browser versions as possible. Plus, to make the task manageable you’re going to have to automate the whole mess which, in itself, will be no small task.
Moreover, given that there are online services that can do the job of loading your content into all of the browsers that are available you really have to wonder why you’d bother at all with trying to do it yourself.
One of the slickest offerings in this area is Browsershots. This service allows you to select any or all of 90 browser versions running on Windows, OS X, Linux, and BSD and enter the URL of the page to be tested. You can also select the target screen size and color depth as well as whether Java, JavaScript, and Flash execution should be allowed.
The result, which, if you select all of the browser options, can take three or more hours to produce, is a page of thumbnails of the output of each test. Click on a thumbnail and you are shown and enlarged version, clicking on the enlarged version shows you a full-sized image of the browser screen.
I tried the service on my Web site’s home page and much to my surprise the test using Safari 3.2.1 on Windows XP showed that this browser detected six malware exploits buried in the page! This was even more strange as no other browser test came to the same conclusion.
To run multiple tests you’ll need to register for an account (free) and then you’ll be able to re-run any additional tests rather than be restricted to the standard 60 browser tests per day.
What’s really clever about Browsershots is that it runs as a distributed service – scores of users contribute some of their processor time to running occasional tests and there’s even a compensation system to encourage users to get involved. The great advantage of distributed testing is that an incredible range of combinations of browser and operating system environments are available this way.
You can register your PC and browser to be a “screenshot factory” and after downloading and installing the factory server software (requires Python to be installed first) your machine will start producing screenshots.
When I re-ran the Safari 3.2.1 on Windows XP test on my home page there were no problem so I assume that this was a problem with one of the factories.
This is a brilliant concept what you might think of as a social or collaborative content testing system. Try it out and let me know what you think.
