BrowserSeal: fast multi browser screenshots

BrowserSeal version 2.20

noreply@blogger.com (Demiurg) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:56:00 +0000

BrowserSeal today announced a new release of its cross browser testing application. Version 2.20 adds Firefox 4.0, Safari 6 and Opera 11 to already extensive list of supported browsers which now include Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0, Chrome, Opera 8, 9, 10 and 11, Safari 3, 4, 5 and 6 and also Opera Mini for mobile browser testing.

BrowserSeal is the fastest and the most user friendly cross browser testing tool available today. As it is an application which is installed on users PC, rather than a web service, it can be used to test web sites in production that are located on web developers PC or company intranet.

It comes with standalone versions of all major browsers which allows the developer to interact with the web site and debug the issue once rendering inconsistency has been found.

BrowserSeal was specifically designed to be embedded in scripts - BrowserSeal.Robot edition comes with command line interface which can be used to automate the tedious testing process.

Version 2.20 is a minor upgrade that should allow our current users (which can download it free of charge) to keep pace with rapidly evolving modern browser scene while we are working on a new major release that would add such functionality as form based authentication and much, much more.

Trial version can be downloaded free of charge from www.browserseal.com

BrowserSeal 2.10 released

noreply@blogger.com (Clumsy ;)) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:50:00 +0000

BrowserSeal version 2.10 offers tremendous speed improvements for websites rich with multimedia (images, video, audio) content, drastically cutting the screenshot time and allowing faster cross-browser testing. As websites today contain a great deal of heavy graphics, this improvement will interest most web developers.

This update further secures our position as the fastest multiple browser screenshot tool available today.

We would like to remind of BrowserSeal’s unique features carried on in version 2.10:
- Standalone versions of all browsers (allowing manual testing in case of inconsistencies)
- Allows testing local and intranet websites
- Command line interface for automation scripting
- Opera Mini 5.1 for cellular browser testing

Please visit us at www.browserseal.com, where you can also download a free trial version.

BrowserSeal 2.0 released

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:09:00 +0000

We a thrilled to announce our first major upgrade since BrowserSeal initial release - version 2.0. We understand that mobile browser testing becomes increasingly important and with this version we decided to extend BrowserSeal capabilities to support cellular browser testing by adding Opera Mini 5.1 to the list of browsers supported by BrowserSeal!

Opera Mini can be selected during an installation

With BrowserSeal 2.0 you can now take a screenshot of your website in multiple versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera and Opera Mini. Using convenient tab based navigation interface

You can switch between screenshots taken with different browsers and immediately spot any rendering difference.

However, this is not all. As BrowserSeal comes with standalone versions of all supported browsers, version 2.0 ships with Opera Mini for a PC. This is correct - you can now run Opera Mini mobile browser on your PC with Windows XP, Vista or 7 as a regular application and easily test your web site under mobile browse.

As all our previous versions, BrowserSeal 2.0 comes in two editions - Standard and Automation. Standard edition is intended for individual developers - it allows to capture a web site screenshot with easy to use graphical user interface. The Automation edition, also known as BrowserSeal.Robot, includes all the functionality of the Standard edition along with the command line interface, which can be used to capture multiple screenshots automatically without user interaction.

More information is available at BrowserSeal web site.

BrowserSeal 1.6 released

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:34:00 +0000

Version 1.6 of BrowserSeal cross browser testing tool is now available. This minor upgrade includes a number of bug fixes and stability improvements, especially for Internet Explorer. This version also features a completely new online install system with significantly reduced size of the installation download.

As all previous versions, this upgrade comes with 10 standalone browser versions - Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7 and IE8), Firefox (3.0 and 3.5), Opera (8, 9 and 10) and Safari (3 and 4). It can also work with the following system browsers installed in the usual manner - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Opera.

Free trial version is available for download from http://www.browserseal.com

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:04:00 +0000

Smashing magazine on BrowserSeal:

BrowserSeal is a new tool. Similar to SuperPreview, it is an application rather than a Web service, and as such its capture speed is very good.
...
A very nice tool, with comprehensive browser support. The interface is easy to use, the capture speed is great, and the price is competitive.

Unique features: Comes with standalone versions for all major browsers; has command-line mode for automation scripts.

Read more here.

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:55:00 +0000

BrowserSeal review at Devlounge.

This is what they got to say:

Installation is pretty painless, although it does take some time. That’s because BrowserSeal has all the major browsers built-in...

The bottom line, though, is that BrowserSeal does what it says: it takes screenshots of your website on multiple browsers, and does this fast. And when you’re chasing a deadline, speed is good.

Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:46:00 +0000

As part of our aggressive marketing campaign we are going to offer one $30 discount coupon each weak. Each coupon will expire in 7 days from the issue day and is valid for a single use, i.e. only the first one to grab it can receive the discount, so stay tuned.

This week's promo code is - ~~BSEALPROMO30979826734243~~

Hint - you can follow this blog to receive updates about next week promotion and other useful information.

Update: this coupon has been used.

BrowserSeal 1.5 release

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:42:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:41:00 +0000

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.Robot

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:29:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:10:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:05:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (BrowserSeal admin) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:02:00 +0000

BrowserSeal is finally up and running!

It took a lot of effort to make this first beta version happen and there are tons of work ahead. However, it is up and running and there are people who actually use even the very limited beta version, which is encouraging.

Some time ago I realized that the issue of cross browser testing, which is quite problematic already, will only get worse in the foreseeable future. Although one can think of many tools that can make the process of cross browser testing easier for a web developer, to my greatest surprise I found out that even something as trivial as taking a screenshot of your web site in different browsers is a big problem. True, there are tools that can do this, but all of them are terribly slow and sometimes not very cheap either.

The problem with all browser screenshot services, starting from the free Browsershots and including soon-to-become expensive Adobe Browserlab, is that they are... services. It takes painful minutes to get your web site rendered on the server farm somewhere on the other end of the world and than get the results back. Not to mention that the process of launching the screenshot is a bit cumbersome.

Wouldn't it be great to fire the screenshot application with a single click of a mouse and have all the results on your screen in just a few seconds! Well, this is what BrowserSeal is about. Browser screenshots with a balzing speed and an ease of use that a web service can never compete with.

How do I do this ? The key is not to use a render farm approach. All components of BrowserSeal run locally on your PC, including the browsers. You may think that this is the catch, but in reality it is not - Windows users can easily run all major browsers (including IE6, IE7 and IE8 with the help of IE Collection) locally. Unfortunately, for Mac and Linux users there is no easy solution.

There is a nice side effect of implementing BrowserSeal as a standalone application which does not require an expensive server farm - it will allow me to be very price competitive.

As I said, BrowserSeal is up and a free beta version is available for download. It currently supports Firefox, Safari and one IE browsers only, but the first commercial version due to the end of October will support multiple IE versions and Opera and will also have numerous performance and usability improvements.