6 ms·

BrowserStack is out of beta: super-easy multi-browser testing

77 points by tbassetto 15y ago

there 15y ago
the rotated text does not look good in firefox 7/mac: http://i.imgur.com/XsiTi.png http://i.imgur.com/XsiTi.png i know of a service they can use for testing their website in different browsers...
gregdetre 15y ago
This looks interesting - we've been pretty happy with crossbrowsertesting.com until now, which is also worth a look. Here's what I'd love next - we'd write a bunch of QUnit javascript tests, put them behind a private url on our staging server, and then be able to run those tests from the command-line on multiple browsers (through BrowserStack, say), and spit back the output in a form that Jenkins understands. I'd certainly pay $20/month for that, and maybe more if it was great.
- ritesharora 15y ago
  We are partnering with Jquery Swarm to run Jquery unit tests! ... so this will happen very soon.
- substack 15y ago
  We at browserling will be releasing something perfect for that in a week or so! Sneak peak: http://browserling.com:9088/ http://browserling.com:9088/
mrud 15y ago
Is this somehow related to browserling/stackvm? Afaik the idea is the same but browserstack looks much more polished and mature. Ok i just discovered that browserstack needs java so it seems they are using a different sw stack
- ritesharora 15y ago
  Browserstack needs Java only for creating local tunnel via web interface. For the rest it uses Flash!
  - mrud 15y ago
    Ah ok i'm sorry i misread that.
ghc 15y ago
Just tried this on my in-development web app. The good news is that it works like a charm. The bad news is that the browsers keep prompting to save the password of my test account. I wish they'd turned of password manager for all of the browsers. I also feel a little weird typing in my test account password into their site.
- ritesharora 15y ago
  Though all passwords/history/etc are cleaned. Your idea seems like a better one!
kgtm 15y ago
A bit off-topic, but i find the Plans & Pricing page to be a very good example of how to design for an attention-lacking crowd, i.e. most web users. In particular, the team-size icons is a rare example of using eye-candy to succinctly help in clarifying for whom each package is tailored. Or maybe i am just easily excited today! If anything, i would invert the per-person price with the overall price in order to give emphasis to "more people is actually cheaper". There is something in descending prices that makes people feel good.
jcampbell1 15y ago
I used to be interested in this type of service, but then I got an SSD. With an SSD it takes about 5 seconds to boot windows through parallels, and now cross browser testing is no longer a chore. I am willing to admit that I pirate windows for the sole purpose of supporting IE with my webapps. It would be too expensive to do it legitimately, so my solution is not for everyone.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  I used to buy Windows licenses, even multiple use family packs. And I would install them in Parallels on my Mac for testing IE. That works, until your Windows keys start to expire. I guess I installed them too many times. Now my keys no longer work. So now I pirate copies of Windows that I have paid for, because it's too much hassle to work with the legitimate versions.
- yuhong 15y ago
  I think MS provides VM images of Windows for testing IE.
  - quandrum 15y ago
    here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575
  - wpietri 15y ago
    If they are the same ones we tried, they are a giant pain. Lots of screwing around to get everything downloaded and set up right for multiple version of IE. Then they expire every few months, requiring regular doses of rigmarole. And when you finally have them set up, you know what prize you win? You get to debug some crazy-making IE issue. As far as I'm concerned, free isn't enough: they should come with masseuses and bottles of good scotch in compensation.
- npollock 15y ago
  Here's a great discussion about how to run multiple versions of IE on a single windows instance, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574463/running-internet-explorer-6-internet-explorer-7-and-internet-explorer-8-on-the http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574463/running-internet-e...
kennystone 15y ago
Cool logo... what I really need is android/ios device testing.
- ritesharora 15y ago
  its coming soon!
chefsurfing 15y ago
Bravo BrowserStack team! I am using this to test IE7 on our staging environment. Your signup process was great, I was able to jump-in and start testing immediately. I think you could add better communication and assurances about security and private information. Keep up the good work.
- ritesharora 15y ago
  All user information is kept private and everything is erased once user stops testing. Sure, the security document is coming soon!
DougWebb 15y ago
This looks cool, but I'm not sure about the long-term value. Looking at their browser list, I could test all Firefox, Opera, and Chrome versions, one version of IE, and the Windows versions of Safari on one Windows 7 box. I could add to that three VMs for older versions of IE, and a Mac (maybe with a VM) for Mac Safari versions. If the main Win7 machine is also a VM, I could do this all on the Mac. So, that's a total of 5-6 OS licenses, which would cost $750-$1000. At $19/month for a single user, BrowserStack becomes more expensive after 2-3 years. At the small team rate of $68/year it becomes more expensive after one year. (I could host VMs on a server and have my testers RDP into it; they can't use the VMs simultaneously but with 4 testers and 5-6 VMs that's not a problem.) To me, the pricing is right on the edge, which forces me to evaluate the effort of maintaining local VMs and browsers (an invisible cost is most organizations) vs the potential risks of running my in-development software and providing access to my development environments to a third-party over the internet. If the pricing was lower and clearly less expensive than maintaining my own VMs, it'd be a slam-dunk decision and the other factors wouldn't even be considered. (I'm thinking about this from a "how does a developer sell this to corporate management" perspective.)
- jordanlev 15y ago
  maintaining local VM's and browsers may be "an invisible cost" to organizations, but what about the zillions of web designers out there?
- gizmo 15y ago
  Installing and configuring VMs up to the point where you can do good testing with them is a painful and tedious work. Why waste the time of expensive professionals on something if you can fix the problem for $70-$150 a month? $70 bucks a month is only real money if you're a broke startup. Otherwise it's peanuts.
  - Bootvis 15y ago
    And don't forget the maintenance you have to do on those machines. You're testing is 5 minutes under way and BAM Windows updates wants your attention for a reboot.
lobster_johnson 15y ago
Too slow to use over here in Europe. Feels like using VNC on a dialup.
- ritesharora 15y ago
  Currently our server in europe is at Ireland. Soon coming up with more in europe: london, amsterdam and more
- angry-hacker 15y ago
  Fellow European here. Unfortunately also too slow use it properly...
Domenic_S 15y ago
I was chugging along happily until I started observing someone else's testing session! I typed "neato!" into their search bar; they promptly logged off.
revorad 15y ago
This is really well done. It's going to be very useful to us, thanks! Edit: The tunnel to my local server doesn't work. I keep getting "There's no server running at port 80".
jmathes 15y ago
Browserstack is great, but it's still catching up to Sauce Scout (disclaimer: I work at Sauce Labs). It needs better support for testing firewalled or localhost sites, and it needs security (it re-uses VMs) Awesome work, guys! I know first hand how hard it is to maintain a product like this :)
kwamenum86 15y ago
Clever logo but butt ugly.
diamondhead 15y ago
An API would be great for us since it would let us to run our tests against all web browsers by making some http requests. Wouldn't it be revolutionary?
- ritesharora 15y ago
  Hi, why don't you drop an email at support@browserstack.com with your idea as we have some similar ideas cooking up.
  - diamondhead 15y ago
    Sure, I've just send it.
- substack 15y ago
  As I just mentioned elsewhere this thread already, browserling is rolling out exactly this service really soon! Here's a sneak peak: http://browserling.com:9088/ http://browserling.com:9088/
daev 15y ago
maintenance is spelled wrong
zackattack 15y ago
I would prefer to use http://browserling.com/ http://browserling.com/ all day. The home page design is way more awesome.
jbm 15y ago
Just showed this to some people at a company I'm working at. I'm guessing they are going to spring for it - 4 seats at least :P Good job dude.
ikbear 15y ago
Too slow to accept.

77 points by tbassetto 15y ago

there 15y ago

the rotated text does not look good in firefox 7/mac: http://i.imgur.com/XsiTi.png http://i.imgur.com/XsiTi.png i know of a service they can use for testing their website in different browsers...

gregdetre 15y ago

This looks interesting - we've been pretty happy with crossbrowsertesting.com until now, which is also worth a look. Here's what I'd love next - we'd write a bunch of QUnit javascript tests, put them behind a private url on our staging server, and then be able to run those tests from the command-line on multiple browsers (through BrowserStack, say), and spit back the output in a form that Jenkins understands. I'd certainly pay $20/month for that, and maybe more if it was great.

ritesharora 15y ago
We are partnering with Jquery Swarm to run Jquery unit tests! ... so this will happen very soon.
substack 15y ago
We at browserling will be releasing something perfect for that in a week or so! Sneak peak: http://browserling.com:9088/ http://browserling.com:9088/

mrud 15y ago

Is this somehow related to browserling/stackvm? Afaik the idea is the same but browserstack looks much more polished and mature. Ok i just discovered that browserstack needs java so it seems they are using a different sw stack

ritesharora 15y ago
Browserstack needs Java only for creating local tunnel via web interface. For the rest it uses Flash!
- mrud 15y ago
  Ah ok i'm sorry i misread that.

ghc 15y ago

Just tried this on my in-development web app. The good news is that it works like a charm. The bad news is that the browsers keep prompting to save the password of my test account. I wish they'd turned of password manager for all of the browsers. I also feel a little weird typing in my test account password into their site.

ritesharora 15y ago
Though all passwords/history/etc are cleaned. Your idea seems like a better one!

kgtm 15y ago

A bit off-topic, but i find the Plans & Pricing page to be a very good example of how to design for an attention-lacking crowd, i.e. most web users. In particular, the team-size icons is a rare example of using eye-candy to succinctly help in clarifying for whom each package is tailored. Or maybe i am just easily excited today! If anything, i would invert the per-person price with the overall price in order to give emphasis to "more people is actually cheaper". There is something in descending prices that makes people feel good.

jcampbell1 15y ago

I used to be interested in this type of service, but then I got an SSD. With an SSD it takes about 5 seconds to boot windows through parallels, and now cross browser testing is no longer a chore. I am willing to admit that I pirate windows for the sole purpose of supporting IE with my webapps. It would be too expensive to do it legitimately, so my solution is not for everyone.

wavephorm 15y ago
I used to buy Windows licenses, even multiple use family packs. And I would install them in Parallels on my Mac for testing IE. That works, until your Windows keys start to expire. I guess I installed them too many times. Now my keys no longer work. So now I pirate copies of Windows that I have paid for, because it's too much hassle to work with the legitimate versions.
yuhong 15y ago
I think MS provides VM images of Windows for testing IE.
- quandrum 15y ago
  here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575
- wpietri 15y ago
  If they are the same ones we tried, they are a giant pain. Lots of screwing around to get everything downloaded and set up right for multiple version of IE. Then they expire every few months, requiring regular doses of rigmarole. And when you finally have them set up, you know what prize you win? You get to debug some crazy-making IE issue. As far as I'm concerned, free isn't enough: they should come with masseuses and bottles of good scotch in compensation.
npollock 15y ago
Here's a great discussion about how to run multiple versions of IE on a single windows instance, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574463/running-internet-explorer-6-internet-explorer-7-and-internet-explorer-8-on-the http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574463/running-internet-e...

kennystone 15y ago

Cool logo... what I really need is android/ios device testing.

ritesharora 15y ago
its coming soon!

chefsurfing 15y ago

Bravo BrowserStack team! I am using this to test IE7 on our staging environment. Your signup process was great, I was able to jump-in and start testing immediately. I think you could add better communication and assurances about security and private information. Keep up the good work.

ritesharora 15y ago
All user information is kept private and everything is erased once user stops testing. Sure, the security document is coming soon!

DougWebb 15y ago

This looks cool, but I'm not sure about the long-term value. Looking at their browser list, I could test all Firefox, Opera, and Chrome versions, one version of IE, and the Windows versions of Safari on one Windows 7 box. I could add to that three VMs for older versions of IE, and a Mac (maybe with a VM) for Mac Safari versions. If the main Win7 machine is also a VM, I could do this all on the Mac. So, that's a total of 5-6 OS licenses, which would cost $750-$1000. At $19/month for a single user, BrowserStack becomes more expensive after 2-3 years. At the small team rate of $68/year it becomes more expensive after one year. (I could host VMs on a server and have my testers RDP into it; they can't use the VMs simultaneously but with 4 testers and 5-6 VMs that's not a problem.) To me, the pricing is right on the edge, which forces me to evaluate the effort of maintaining local VMs and browsers (an invisible cost is most organizations) vs the potential risks of running my in-development software and providing access to my development environments to a third-party over the internet. If the pricing was lower and clearly less expensive than maintaining my own VMs, it'd be a slam-dunk decision and the other factors wouldn't even be considered. (I'm thinking about this from a "how does a developer sell this to corporate management" perspective.)

jordanlev 15y ago
maintaining local VM's and browsers may be "an invisible cost" to organizations, but what about the zillions of web designers out there?
gizmo 15y ago
Installing and configuring VMs up to the point where you can do good testing with them is a painful and tedious work. Why waste the time of expensive professionals on something if you can fix the problem for $70-$150 a month? $70 bucks a month is only real money if you're a broke startup. Otherwise it's peanuts.
- Bootvis 15y ago
  And don't forget the maintenance you have to do on those machines. You're testing is 5 minutes under way and BAM Windows updates wants your attention for a reboot.

lobster_johnson 15y ago

Too slow to use over here in Europe. Feels like using VNC on a dialup.

ritesharora 15y ago
Currently our server in europe is at Ireland. Soon coming up with more in europe: london, amsterdam and more
angry-hacker 15y ago
Fellow European here. Unfortunately also too slow use it properly...

Domenic_S 15y ago

I was chugging along happily until I started observing someone else's testing session! I typed "neato!" into their search bar; they promptly logged off.

revorad 15y ago

This is really well done. It's going to be very useful to us, thanks! Edit: The tunnel to my local server doesn't work. I keep getting "There's no server running at port 80".

jmathes 15y ago

Browserstack is great, but it's still catching up to Sauce Scout (disclaimer: I work at Sauce Labs). It needs better support for testing firewalled or localhost sites, and it needs security (it re-uses VMs) Awesome work, guys! I know first hand how hard it is to maintain a product like this :)

kwamenum86 15y ago

Clever logo but butt ugly.

diamondhead 15y ago

An API would be great for us since it would let us to run our tests against all web browsers by making some http requests. Wouldn't it be revolutionary?

ritesharora 15y ago
Hi, why don't you drop an email at support@browserstack.com with your idea as we have some similar ideas cooking up.
- diamondhead 15y ago
  Sure, I've just send it.
substack 15y ago
As I just mentioned elsewhere this thread already, browserling is rolling out exactly this service really soon! Here's a sneak peak: http://browserling.com:9088/ http://browserling.com:9088/

daev 15y ago

maintenance is spelled wrong

zackattack 15y ago

I would prefer to use http://browserling.com/ http://browserling.com/ all day. The home page design is way more awesome.

jbm 15y ago

Just showed this to some people at a company I'm working at. I'm guessing they are going to spring for it - 4 seats at least :P Good job dude.

ikbear 15y ago

Too slow to accept.