
BrowserStack is out of beta: super-easy multi-browser testing - tbassetto
http://www.browserstack.com
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Domenic_S
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.

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jcampbell1
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.

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yuhong
I think MS provides VM images of Windows for testing IE.

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wpietri
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.

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jmathes
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 :)

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mrud
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

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ritesharora
Browserstack needs Java only for creating local tunnel via web interface. For
the rest it uses Flash!

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mrud
Ah ok i'm sorry i misread that.

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kgtm
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.

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there
the rotated text does not look good in firefox 7/mac:

<http://i.imgur.com/XsiTi.png>

i know of a service they can use for testing their website in different
browsers...

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gregdetre
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.

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substack
We at browserling will be releasing something perfect for that in a week or
so! Sneak peak: <http://browserling.com:9088/>

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DougWebb
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.)

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gizmo
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.

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Bootvis
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.

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ghc
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.

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

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chefsurfing
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.

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

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revorad
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".

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jbm
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.

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

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ritesharora
Currently our server in europe is at Ireland. Soon coming up with more in
europe: london, amsterdam and more

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

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ritesharora
its coming soon!

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kwamenum86
Clever logo but butt ugly.

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ikbear
Too slow to accept.

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daev
maintenance is spelled wrong

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

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diamondhead
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?

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ritesharora
Hi, why don't you drop an email at support@browserstack.com with your idea as
we have some similar ideas cooking up.

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diamondhead
Sure, I've just send it.

