Comments on: Adobe BrowserLab: The Meer Meer rises

By: sfegette

sfegette — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:23:59 +0000

@Joeri – using Dreamweaver CS4′s Live View you’re basically getting a Webkit-based rendering of the page you can interact with. Essentially you do that- interact with the page in DW CS4, load data, trigger JS widgets/etc, and then hit F6 to ‘freeze’ JS and the DOM, sending the resulting code + assets (images/etc) to the BrowserLab service directly for distributed preview, essentially like an HTTP response. Other than requiring a local testing environment on hand to build the page/service back-end requests any design/layout/interactive state you can get to in DW’s Live View can be viewed in BrowserLab across the entire array of browsers effectively this way.

-Scott Fegette
(Adobe BrowserLab Product Manager)

By: Joeri

Joeri — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:51:05 +0000

@kberger:
Interesting, but how does this work? Does it send the DOM to the server? How would I as a web developer be able to know for sure that the same sequence of actions in the tested browser would result in the same view that browserlab is giving me?

By: nogray

nogray — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:10:04 +0000

By far this is the best browser testing website, http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com

By: kberger

kberger — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:40:01 +0000

Kenneth here, also of the BrowserLab team. While you can’t currently directly interact with the page in BrowserLab, you *can* preview it any state using Dreamweaver CS4′s “Pause JavaScript” command and the BrowserLab Dreamweaver extensions, posted here:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/browserlab.html

By viewing the page in Dreamweaver’s live view and then pausing it in the state you’re interested in, you can both test interactive pages as well as pages that aren’t posted publicly (since they’re securely uploaded directly to the BrowserLab service). Check it out!

By: disruptive

disruptive — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:15:13 +0000

I’m so happy to see a major player in the software industry step up to the challenge of tackling the nightmare that is cross-browser compatibility testing.

Adding support for authentication, realtime interactivity, and the ability to enable/disable plug-ins like Flash or Quicktime would be a value add. Also, options to enable/disable built-in browser functionality like Javascript support would be helpful.

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:06:39 +0000

I agree with some others above, seeing just a screen shot doesn’t cut it when designing apps. I need to see cookies and what’s coming through the HTTP pipe, so a virtual machine is still the way to go.

By: Joeri

Joeri — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:24:42 +0000

I agree 100% that this has only marginal use for app development if it doesn’t do interaction.

Another problem is that your development server has to be running on the open internet, which is complete foolishness from a security perspective. I don’t know if this can access the site across HTTPS with some form of authentication, but if it can’t, there’s no way I could use this.

By: Darkimmortal

Darkimmortal — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:05:44 +0000

Virtualisation for an IE 6 installation is ALL you need – everything else can run on the same Windows installation.

By: eric2

eric2 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:14:04 +0000

+1 for cancelbubble’s comment. I’m sure services like this (and there are already dozens so this isn’t really unique) are useful to people making static websites. But who really does that anymore. You need more than a screenshot these days. You also need to test things like JavaScript functionality.

This is where services like this fall flat on their face. You still need to boot up a VirtualBox instance (or VMWare if you prefer) to test that type of stuff. If you already got it up to test your interactive functionality might as well use that to test the look as well. So really no need for a product like this.

Now if someone could offer a service where I could connect to an remote IE6, 7 and 8, Mac Safari, etc (maybe seemless like Citrix offers) then that would be really hot. Then I could not only make sure it looks right but also make sure it acts right without the need to carry around half a dozen virtual machines to test all the environments.

By: cancelbubble

cancelbubble — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:55:14 +0000

Does this only show graphical/visual screenshots in different browsers? Is there any interaction/functionality of the web site in different browsers? If not, can’t say I’m too impressed (though the onion skin is cool) as I’ll stick with Sun’s Virtual Box and IETester for cross browser testing.

By: richlee

richlee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:58:59 +0000

Hi, this is Rich from the BrowserLab team. We’re thrilled at the response so far! We’ve reached the limit for this first launch, so we’re temporarily “closed.” We will have more openings over time. We’re really sorry you can’t try it at this time. Updates will be posted here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/442068?tstart=0

Thanks,
Rich
BrowserLab Product Marketing

By: bluebay

bluebay — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:32:21 +0000

Hi, fellow Ajaxians.
I was one of the four individuals who invented Meer Meer here in Chicago in 2007 and sold it to Adobe that same year. In fact, I am the person who named it Meer Meer. We were pretty tired of renting time on other testing sites or updating our licenses and equipment to test in house. Today, we’re pretty excited to see this testing tool hit the streets. I can say that it was conceived and built with many more ground-breaking features than are being revealed right now in this beta release, and web designers should expect to see some or all of these features in the near future. It will be great to see everyone’s feedback here on this message board (and elsewhere!)

By: V1

V1 — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:45:16 +0000

I would like see active DOM nodes and actual CSS rules when you hover the image. :# I know Flash can render HTML markup so it can easily be done. It will make the much more interesting for none dreamweaver or adobe fans.

By: daitro

daitro — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:39:14 +0000

what i’d like to see? well, for starters, the thing working. seens like they are having some heavy traffic and are unable to accept new users. meh guess i’ll have to wait

By: youngestlinton

youngestlinton — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:18:38 +0000

A nice UI, but done before many a time.

I find its better to actually test them yourself rather than view images, if possible, as that brings up a lot of stuff you wouldn’t otherwise see. IETester is a great tool for testing all the IEs. http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage