3 ms·
Automated integration/regression tests is a pretty big use case. You spin up a copy of your server, point the headless browser at it, run some JavaScript to si
by cbhl 9y ago
Automated integration/regression tests is a pretty big use case.
You spin up a copy of your server, point the headless browser at it, run some JavaScript to simulate some user interactions, and verify the page contains the right strings / screenshot doesn't deviate too much from a golden image.
I guess the ELI5 way of saying that would be: "Making sure your website still works."
People also headless browsers for content generation inside larger systems. (I saw one team make videos by creating CSS animations, and then capturing screenshots from the headless browser at 30 fps.)
- nkkollaw 9y agoGot it. Thanks!
- tyingq 9y agoScraping for data is another big use case. Like a price comparison web site. Or the company LinkedIn is unhappy about because they are scraping profile data.
- nashashmi 9y agoSo an ELI5 of everything you said would be: Putting the website through user actions in a firefox browser and recording/capturing/documenting the results headlessly. Headless version allows you to go through hundreds of results in the background.
- cbhl 9y agoMaybe. I got stuck trying to imagine whether a five-year-old would understand what "headless" means in a software context (as opposed to, "headless dragon" or something).