Technology Preview

Today I announce a very early Technology Preview release (aka 0.3-alpha1) for the new server at v03.browsershots.org. There is some basic functionality, but many things don't work yet. For example, there are only two factories with the new XML-RPC interface, with different versions of Firefox and Konqueror on Linux. They run sporadically and only with my supervision.

A very brief overview of the changes from 0.2 to 0.3 is available in the wiki. If you want to try running a screenshot factory, get the source from the subversion repository and subscribe to the factory mailing list.

Your feedback is wildly appreciated. You can post a comment right here, open a ticket in the new Trac, or write to one of the mailing lists.

Project mailing lists

I received a lot of thoughtful feedback for my interface design study of the upcoming version 0.3. Thank you everybody! I have updated the mock-up with some of your suggestions. If you want to look at it and maybe test the new URL checker, click here and then enter "microsoft.com" without http://.

In case anybody is interested in further discussion, I have set up some mailing lists for that. Just click on the list name below and subscribe.

• browsershots-announce: Software release announcements.
• browsershots-commits: Subversion commit messages for developers.
• browsershots-dev: Discussion among developers.
• browsershots-factories: About running a screenshot factory.
• browsershots-i18n: Translating the web interface into other languages.
• browsershots-ui: Designing the web-based user interface.

Czech translation added

Martin Smrt contributed the Czech translation that I finally added today after much travelling and studying for my exams. Browsershots is available in 20 languages now. Thank you!

One Million Screenshots!

This week we have reached one million website screenshots. That's a lot of work since February 2005. Hopefully, the next million will go a little faster because all queues are usually full. I have another exam on Tuesday, so wish me luck. After that I hope to make swift progress on Browsershots version 0.3 on the new server.

Mock-up for Browsershots 0.3

I have started designing the user interface for the next version of Browsershots. Now I'd love to get feedback and ideas for it. Please have a look and tell me what you think. Remember that it's only a mock-up with no real functionality so far.

You can either post a comment right here, or send Email, or open a Trac ticket. If you are a web designer, send me a scribble with your ideas! I'm particularly interested in the following points:

Read more…

Queue limit reduced from 24 hours to one

For most factories, the demand is consistently higher than the throughput, so they are always near the queue limit that used to be 24 hours. I have now reduced the queue limit to 60 minutes. The effect is that the same number of jobs will be rejected because the queue is full, but the turnaround time and the length of the queue are slashed.

Firefox 1.5

I have set up a new box with Ubuntu 6.04 "Dapper Drake" which includes Firefox 1.5. Two small improvements were made, and the other Linux factories were updated too:

• Screen resolution set explicitly to 90 DPI (to fix small fonts)
• Mouse pointer moved explicitly to top left corner (to fix problems with mouse-over effects and multi-page screenshots)

Bulgarian and Turkish, drop-down language selector

Two new translations: Bulgarian by Evgeni Vasilev, Turkish by Muhammet Sevim. Thank you!

Because the language links started taking up too much space in the nav bar, I implemented a drop-down selector with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript enabled and it doesn't work for you, please let me know which browser you are using so I can try to fix it.

Windows XP factory taken over by spyware

I didn't think it would last that long. After 4 months of smooth operation, my screenshot factory with MSIE 6 on Windows XP has been taken over by spyware. The infection was so severe that the system was rendered completely unusable.

So I restored the hard drive from a backup image that I made right after installation in September. Then I ran Windows Update to get the latest security patches. Right now I'm making a new hard drive image for next time. The factory will be back to work in a few minutes.

Jag åker till Sverige

I will be traveling in Scandinavia between the 11th and 21st of December. Therefore I won't be able to keep a watchful eye on the screenshot factories. If a factory stops working, it may take a few days before I can get someone to restart it.

Between christmas and new year I'll be with my mom in offline land, so same situation. In January I hope to start moving the project to a bigger server.

Nice holidays to everybody!

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