Friday, May 2, 2008

Open source, distributed, multi-platform, web browser screenshots!

If you're an XHTML and CSS designer you've had the problem where your beautiful design breaks in different browsers. Therefore, you have to recheck your designs in the major browsers. I normally go with IE6+ and Firefox 1.5+.

Due to the huge number of different browsers out there on different Operating Systems, it usually isn't possible to have access to each browser/OS configuration. That is why many designers use as services such as browsercam.com; which is a paid service that generates screenshots of web pages in different browsers running on different operating systems.

Today while looking for alternatives I stumbled upon http://browsershots.org/. This is an Open Source service that takes screenshots of web pages in different browsers and Operating Systems on distributed computers working together via XML-RPC. Contributers to the service register as Screenshot Factories which poll the Server's for screenshot requests in its queue.

The author of project, Johann C. Rocholl, came up with the idea in November 2004. The service has been around since Feb 2005.

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