Comments on: BrowserShots… no longer excellent

By: w1sh

w1sh — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:15:14 +0000

Oh, and f**k all you people who are coming to it’s defense.

They make money off ads and paid services, they should be able to afford slightly better servers. Their business model is f**ked up.

By: w1sh

w1sh — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:13:43 +0000

I’m with author. BrowserShots used to be awesome, but now it’s a piece of shit.

By: strys

strys — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:51:20 +0000

Agreed, browsershots as a service has gone backwards, the quality is also not what it used to be. That said it still is a great idea and decent software. For screenshots I’d rather use the Adobe browserlab these days (free while in beta) another alternative is spoon browsers or multi browser viewer which has screenshots and have stand alone browsers, but it is a paid service

By: BrowserSeal

BrowserSeal — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:32:36 +0000

Just wanted to let everybody looking for Browsershots alternative know that we released BrowserSeal version 1.1 which adds support for Chrome and Opera addition to Firefox, Safari, IE6, IE7 and IE8

By: Dustin

Dustin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:50:40 +0000

I agree with the author and I bet some of the commentators here are associated with browsershots.

I think its a great service. And whats wrong with admitting the service has degraded a bit?

By: Vasya

Vasya — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:00:32 +0000

What some of you fail to understand is the fact that this is part of a larger trend. One can no longer afford to run a non-profitable internet business. Which would sound less astonishing if we were talking about a non-internet business.

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:30:38 +0000

I too agree with the author of this article and Jose.

The service has become a bit less than ideal for the free user. I see no reason to jump down the author’s throat for an observation.

Visitors like me only recently came to the conclusion that BrowserShots is no longer excellent and it’s refreshing to see a blog post saying the same.

By: Jose

Jose — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:24:26 +0000

“Free” doesn’t equal crap, and it also doesn’t equal “I’ll use it with a proud smile even if it is crap, on the sole basis that it is free”.

If the default behavior of a service is to make you wait for 30 mins, give you a time estimate from 2 mins to 2 hours and then cancel your request after your wait while providing 0 results, then that is a bad service.

Is the technical aspect difficult? are resources clogged by all the free users? Should we cut it some slack because it is free?
We can talk about it, but this article states the simple fact that the free service offers poor value to the average visitor. Gmail is also free. nytimes.com is also free. Some of the most complex and brilliantly satisfying services on the internet are free. On the internet we don’t measure quality by the cost of access. I don’t put in my pocket every twig and chewed-up gum I find on the sidewalk just because they are free.

And to that I’ll add that the quality of the screenshots is often questionable. In my own tests I get a hefty amount of blank browser pages returned – of course only after I wait long enough for them.

Also, since the author is too nice I’ll say it: Pat is a raging jerk who should be disconnected from the Internet until further notice, and Thomas and Austin are not very far behind.

By: Demiurg

Demiurg — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:09:41 +0000

You may want to take a look at this new service http://www.browserseal.com

Since it is not a web service, but an application there is no need to wait at all and the interface is much more convenient. The downside is that it’s a new service which is currently in a very early beta stage and only a handful of browsers are supported.

At any rate, I thinks this new service is worth keeping an eye on, as it is being actively developed and new features as well as new browsers will be added in the future.

By: Zack

Zack — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:40:15 +0000

I happen to run 2 screenshot factories for browsershots.org.. And when I watch, it is endless.. If you understand the amount of screenshots that proccess, it’s amazing.. The only problem is that the api server can get overloaded and that halts the screenshots for 30 seconds on the factories.. But I produce 50-70 screenshots an hour on each factory.. and theres 137 computers serving screenshots.. And usually only Windows is backed up.. During daytime hours, you may experience issues getting most of your screenshots.. I usually am able to get 60-70 out of 90 browsers even at peak hours.. If you think the screenshot times are bad, then help out.. Make a factory..