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Announcing Browserling: Interactive cross-browser testing in your browser
- uggedal 16y agoThere might be a privacy issue here. I seem to have gotten the page another user requested, and not the one I typed in: http://imgur.com/QB6Yc.png http://imgur.com/QB6Yc.png
- corey 16y agoI got somebody else's page when I tried to view HN, along with a dialog box that said IETester has stopped working.
- ig1 16y agoI'm willing to bet that if you'd pitched them with your online education video site you'd have got a interview :-)
- nikz 16y agoI get an error message (from the actual app, http://browserling.com/ http://browserling.com/) - "No API resources availble for null group" (seems to be no matter which Browser/Version or URL I choose). I'm using Chrome, as requested.
- benmccann 16y agoI got "No API resources availble for null group". (available is misspelled btw) I'd love to try this if you get it working.
- mettler 16y agoCool! However, I'm seeing an error: "No API resources available for null group".
- city41 16y agoGreat idea and I look forward to using this. There appears to be several issues to work out. I've not been able to get a page rendered. I get "Nexus is down. Try again shortly." "No API for group null" and "You are not signed in!" when I am signed in.
- ericd 16y agoDoes the queue update while you're sitting on the queue page? I was at #2 the whole time, and then it gave me a "time's up" message.
- pkrumins 16y agoEverything crashed at one point so we had to restart everything. Everyone lost their queue. :(
- melvinram 16y agoI got to use it. It's basic for now but shows a lot of promise. A number of factors that you'd need to add for me to even consider using it: - Bigger browser window - More responsive UI. It shows a message saying a plugin was not run (flash) but it took forever to be able to click the X on the message to hide it and it locked up the browser (not my browser but the browser in the browser.) - There was a lot of waiting in the queue and it suggested paid plan... but no paid plan available. - I was able to access other parts of the machine, including the printing and devices section (usually visible when you right click the computer icon and click properties. You might want to lock down the machine a bit more. I'm guessing you're aware of most of these. The only other thing I'll say is that how are you dealing with the Windows licensing? You probably don't want to ignore dealing with that if you haven't yet as it could be painful in the future. Overall, very interesting technology. Kudos!
- city41 16y agoI got to use it too. For IE6, the website failed to download any images. For the other browsers the images came in fine. To the creators of browserling, please don't take these negatives as criticism. It's a great idea and very ambitious, I am excited to use this site!
- Rauchg 16y agoWorked perfectly for me. Great job James & Peteris
- midnightsun 16y agoThis is a very innovative project and I hope you pursue it regardless of yc funding or not. There's lots of Windows apps that would be useful to run in a browser :)
- ZeroMinx 16y agoHaven't been able to test it yet, but this looks quite interesting! The toolbar is prefixed "http:// http:// -- is there support for https? If not, is that on the roadmap?
- pkrumins 16y agoThere will be. There could be right now, we just haven't added it.
- hrabago 16y agoI typed in a URL, selected IE 6, clicked Go, but nothing happened. Did it submit the request? Did I go into a queue?
- t_crayford 16y agoI love the queuing graphics! Nice work on that.
- adriand 16y agoThis marks the first time I have ever enjoyed being in a queue.
- brianwillis 16y agoThis marks the first time I have ever been represented as a purple robot. The person in front of me was a dinosaur, so I think it's only fair that they got to go first.
- AntiRush 16y agoI was a purple robot too. I wonder if you're always a purple robot.
- substack 16y agoGlad you like it! Easter egg: http://browserling.com/queue http://browserling.com/queue
- lazukars 16y agoGreat idea. I see this as a benefit for developers who do not have access to their own pc. Or to clients and/or qa who need to do a quick check. Otherwise, developers can do everything that Browserling does and more with a combination of Virtual Machines, Multiple IEs, and Internet Explorer Collection, etc. Having developer tools is the key.
- cloudwalking 16y agoI think this could be successful because it lets people interact live with elements on the page. This is one thing that Adobe BrowserLab fails to do (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/725431?tstart=0 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/725431?tstart=0 for example). You may not want to answer this, but how will this service scale? Booting an individual VM for each user seems incredibly resource intensive. (disclaimer: I interned on BrowserLab)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Popcorn 16y agoI encountered a bug. I was stuck with the last users website for my session. I clicked "Go" again to see if I could force a refresh to no avail. The lag is a bit too much, but other than that I think it's brilliant.
- adrianwaj 16y agoerratic layout: http://stashbox.org/1034016/ssr.png http://stashbox.org/1034016/ssr.png Chrome 8.0.552.210
- moses1400 16y agofunny enough it doesn't work in IE 8 - enter a url - hit button nothing... gives me a console js error of some sort
- timbonicus 16y agoTried it out for IE6 and when the window loaded, someone else's site was up and I was unable to do anything while the counter ticked down. A bit concerning from a privacy standpoint. Maybe the machine fell over?
- papertiger 16y agoSomething similar occurred once for me as well.
- pieter 16y agoI had about the same; when switching to Firefox, it opened a new tab and before this was opened I was still able to look at an existing tab of someone else.
- AgentConundrum 16y agoI just tried this, but didn't even get to use it. I entered the URL for a site I'm building, wanting to see if IE9 was going to screw me up (I'm still on WinXP), and I was sent to a queue. My only real complaint about the queue is that you give absolutely no indication of how long the expected wait time will be. This would be reasonable, except for the countdown clock, which simply read 00:00 the whole time I was waiting. When I got out of the queue, the countdown clock set itself to 01:30 (quick question: why the leading zero on the minute portion if it's only going to be a single digit value? Is it aesthetics? I actually liked it but I was just wondering...). Unfortunately, for the first 10-15 seconds or so, I was just faced with a blank screen, save for the border around what I assume should be my browserling. After waiting for these 10-15 seconds, I was told that my time was up. The countdown was still running down while this message was shown. Going back to the queue, I'm assuming that the 1:30 I saw counting down on the other page is a standard time limit for a free user, so why can't you give me a reasonable estimate based on something like (users-in-queue * 90seconds) / number-of-available-machines-or-vms-or-whatever?
- patd 16y agoI ended up on a "Loading" page during the whole 90 seconds and then was told that my time up.
- substack 16y agoSorry about that! When the API servers go down (these interface with our windows servers) it tells everybody in the queue "time's up" instead of a more informative message since we're using connection drops as a poor way of passing along the session expiry event.
- baby 16y agoThere are other websites doing that since ages. What's the difference here ?
- staunch 16y agoWhat sites?
- baby 16y agohttp://browsershots.org/ http://browsershots.org/ first one when I search for "browsers screenshots" EDIT : I can't get it to work neither on Firefox nor on Chrome. But I believe the difference is that we can click and use javascript on Ycombinator's version ? That can be usefull to test IE on a website's javascript. Eventhough using a framework like jquery should let us stop worring about that right ?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dannytatom 16y agoAs far as I can tell this uses StackVM to run multiple browsers in a VM in your browser, so it's a bit more than screenshots or testing javascript.
- papertiger 16y agoThis is much more than screenshots and jQuery does not eliminate the need for interactive cross-browser testing in any way.
- tonetheman 16y ago[shameless plug here]http://crossbrowsertesting.com http://crossbrowsertesting.com [end shameless plug] :)
- thebootstrapper 16y agoInteresting technology. I feel it creates more opportunity like your favorite IDE configured with SCM (say github) available right on your browser. Code as you go. No more setting / configuring the IDE more than once. Now i goto grok the stack vm code. ;-)
- saikat 16y agoAre you guys using Socket.io under the hood?
- vinsan 16y agoI think they use self developed variants of node.js
- jesusabdullah 16y agoI know this. They use dnode (https://github.com/substack/dnode https://github.com/substack/dnode) for most of their inter-process/inter-browser communication, which uses socket.io for the web action.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- urbanjunkie 16y agoUnfortunately 2 session timeouts, one missing route error, and now my seconds are ticking down while a rather bashful robot tells me my site is loading. Good idea though - if you can get the pricing model to a point where it's appealing to my infrequent but bursty usage (and you make it reliable), I'd definitely be interested.
- thenayr 16y agoI was using http://spoon.net http://spoon.net for a while. As far as I can tell they are basically a further developed version of this. Unforutantely it looks as though Microsoft was none-too-pleased with their inclusion of Internet Explorer as one of the virtualized browsers and has forced them to shut it down. Hopefully you can elude the same fate... Also, while I'm typically ok with the cartoonish trend of most startups these days, I'd have to say browserling might have gone a bit overboard with the whole thing. I know your only in beta and I'd have to assume things will change as you continue to develop. Best of luck to you guys!
- guiseppecalzone 16y agoThis could be super helpful. I don't think anyone here doesn't feel the pain of cross browser testing. I think that the queue is an interesting concept. I understand that you have to tier your system, but it made me bounce, and not want to go back. If you keep it, find a way to make it clear and seamless.
- grogers 16y agoI tried to go to google.com but it showed me ebay... Switching browsers or going to a different site didn't update anything. Its a neat idea though!
- drdaeman 16y agoAll I've got was "loading", some cmd.exe window (it did not react to any input) and then timeout. http://i53.tinypic.com/6z3qyp.jpg http://i53.tinypic.com/6z3qyp.jpg
- kolor9 16y agoshows ebay.com all the time, nevertheless of what i've entered
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nopal 16y agoIE 5.5 uses IETester. I don't see the advantage of this service if it uses IETester, since I can use this tool myself.
- karlzt 16y agoif it's in beta, why are you already asking for money?
- f00li5h 16y agothe asking for money bit is also in beta...