BrowserSeal 1.5 release

Since this version of BrowserSeal includes so many improvements we decided to skip version 1.4 and release it as 1.5. At the first glance, there are no major changes - the basic functionality is already stable enough so that we are pretty sure it will take us at least till the end of this year. However, minor improvements and new small to medium features are countless:

• Better Windows 7 support
  
• Better support for localized versions of Windows, such as German and Russian
  
• Configurable screenshot delay that allows to pause before making a screenshot in order for flash, javascript and other AJAX content to load
  
• Basic HTTP access authentication support
  
• Support for Internet Expolorer 8 in 7 browser mode - it appears as a separate browser in the configuration screen. When enabled, BrowserSeal will temporarily configure IE8 for IE7 rendering mode. This is especially useful for Windows 7 and Windows Vista where IE7 shipped with IE collection cannot be installed.
  
• Log upload option - in order to make BrowserSeal more stable and to streamline the bug reporting process, BrowserSeal now includes a "log upload" option, located under the "File" menu. BrowserSeal will also ask the user for a permission to upload the log file automatically in case of an error.
  

It also includes bugfixes for all the issues reported in version 1.4. As always, current BrowserSeal users are entitled for a free upgrade.

We believe that this update will secure our position as the fastest and feature reach cross browser testing application.

BrowserSeal 1.3 released

As we already announced a few days ago BrowserSeal version 1.3 is finally out. It adds support for more browsers - Firefox 3.0 and 3.5, Opera 8, 9 and 10 and also Safari 3 and 4, but most importantly, all these browsers are now part of BrowserSeal installation!

The screenshot below shows BrowserSeal installation window - as you can see, the user has an option to install multiple versions of standalone and standard browsers.



This release adds one more important feature, that puts BrowserSeal ahead of competing web based screenshot services such as BrowserLab and Browsershots. When you discover layout problem under one of the less common browsers you can no actually debug this issue under problematic browser.

BrowserSeal.BrowserPack

Following many users requests we decided to add to the next BrowserSeal release which is due in a couple of days all browsers that it can work with, eliminating the need to install them separately.

During our work it occurred to us that a collection of multiple versions (including older ones) of all major browsers might be a useful tool in itself. After a quick internal discussion we decided to release BrowserSeal.BrowserPack free of charge. Current release comes with the following browsers:

• Default Firefox
  
• Firefox 3.0 (3.0.16)
  
• Firefox 3.5 (3.5.6)
  
• Default IE
  
• Internet Explorer 6 (IE6 6.00.2900.2180)
  
• Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 (7.00.5730.13))
  
• Internet Explorer 8 (IE8 8.00.6001.18702)
  
• Default Chrome
  
• Default Opera
  
• Opera 8 (8.54)
  
• Opera 9 (9.64)
  
• Opera 10 (10.10)
  
• Default Safari
  
• Safari 3 (3.2.3)
  
• Safari 4 (4.0.4)
  

More information, including a download link, is available at BrowserSeal site.

For multiple Internet Explorer support BrowserSeal.BrowserPack uses a third party Internet Explorer Collection package.

BrowserSeal.Robot

We just launched a new flavor of BrowserSeal - an automation edition. In addition to all the features of the standard edition, BrowserSeal.Robot allows to capture screenshots of multiple web sites without user intervention. It also features a command line interface which makes it suitable for use in automation scripts. For the full list of BrowserSeal.Robot command line arguments check it's features page.

As far as the standard edition of BrowserSeal is concerned, version 1.2 is just a maintenance release with a couple of minor bug fixes, most notably we fixed the problem with capturing certain web sites with flash video clips.

New hosting

As you may have noticed, we experienced some downtime during the last week. The hosting company claimed that the downtime was limited to a few minutes, but our web site monitor showed that it was actually a few hours.

In order to provide a better service to our customers we decided to move to a different hosting provider. Depending on your location you may still be redirected to an old site in the next 48 hours while DNS server caches are being updated, which will be available during this time.

BrowserSeal 1.1. released

So far we are pretty pleased with the progress we've made and the pace at which new BrowserSeal versions are being released. Less than one month since version 1.0 we are happy to introduce a new minor update which includes support for two mainstream browsers that were on many users wish list - Google Chrome and Opera.

With the addition of these browsers, BrowserSeal now supports Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7 and IE8), Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera which accounts for almost 99% browser market share!

BrowserSeal 1.1 also includes a number of bugfixes:

• URL query strings and references are now properly supported
  
• Monitors with non-standard resolution are supported as well
  
• BrowserSeal 1.1 better handles slow web sites
  
• Numerous other minor fixes
  

This update is available free of charge for our current users.

In the next version we will concentrate our efforts on some new and exciting features. Stay tuned.

After extensive beta testing and actually quite a bit of redesign BrowserSeal version 1.0 is finally out. Feature-wise the biggest improvement is support for multiple Internet Explorer versions - in addition to Firefox and Safari BrowserSeal 1.0 can make a screen capture of IE6, IE7 and IE8. These browsers have to be installed on your PC, which is possible thanks to an excellent Internet Explorer collection package. It is much better than MutipleIE - in fact, I never encountered a single issue with IE6, IE7 and IE8 installed using IE Collection.

Another major change is the fact that BrowserSeal no longer uses Selenium to drive the browser under test. At the beginning, I thought that Selenium would solve me a lot of time, but in the end quite the opposite was true. Although Selenium is a great utility with a lot of options, unfortunately it is far from being stable. When you develop a unit test using Selenium you can probably afford a certain percentage of failures, but this is unacceptable in commercial applications. In addition, although Selenium is often hailed for its multiple browser support, in reality only Firefox and Internet Explorer work reliably. Eventually, I removed Selenium and rewritten everything, relying only on Jetty embedded Java-based HTTP server and client, which is an excellent project which I highly recommend.

Accidentally, Selenium removal resulted in significant speed improvement. BrowserSeal is definitely the fastest multiple browser screenshot tool available today. No web based web site screenshot service can compete with BrowserSeal in terms of speed, especially on large web pages with scrollbars. Speaking of which, as my (obviously biased) researched showed, taking screenshots of pages with scrollbars is something that few screenshot applications/services apart from BrowserSeal handle correctly.

Free trial version with limited functionality is available for download . Note that trial version only supports Firefox, while the full version works with Firfox, Safari, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8.