Firefox 3.5 now available

Firefox 3.5 was released today and we have added it to our XP and Vista configurations. We know that you can't wait to start testing. ;-)

You know that old story about a duck on the pond? Calm on top, paddling like heck underneath. You haven't been able to see a lot of the work we've been doing, but you will soon. We are adding a lot of new functionality and rolling out a new website. You know, one that doesn't look like programmers created it.

That is all for now, I need to get back to work if we are going to make our August release date.

Mike

IE8 and FF 3.1 Beta 3 now available

I finally got Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1 beta 3 up today. Sorry for the wait. Guess I was too busy playing with Expression Web SuperPreview. Not!! It is ironic that the company whose products cause the most incompatibility has decided to build such a tool. Seems like the energy would have been better spent on making the browser more standards compliant. But what do I know?

Enjoy,
Mike

Our stimulus package

We're not giving out billions of dollars, but we are rolling out some new features that we hope you will like. A lot of work has gone into enhancing the infrastructure to improve performance and stability. These changes are not necessarily visible except that they enable us to add other features.

For example, one thing you will notice when you launch a session is that you now have the ability to select a resolution before the session launches. Besides the obvious new capability of being able to test sites at the resolution you choose, this has the advantage of allowing you to control the performance of the session to some degree. The smaller the resolution, the more responsive the service will be. The changes that allow for this feature also give us the ability to automatically reconnect you if the applet has an error. Nice huh?

Another feature we hope you will like is the new Send Text feature. It is not exactly the same as cut and paste, but it will help you enter those long URLs a lot easier than before. Simply enter your text in the provided field and click the Send Text button. The remote session will then type in the text you sent into whatever text box has focus. We will also keep a copy of the text you enter so that you can access it in the future. It even has a nifty type ahead feature that lets you start typing and it will find matches from any part of a previous entry. Very cool, right?

Lastly, we'd like to mention to the handful of people out there that have opened up ports on your router, you will need to make some changes. You should not be using the static IP as it will be changing in the next couple of weeks, use www.crossbrowsertesting.com instead. Also, our port range is changing to 6020-6040.

That is all for this announcement. We just wanted to keep you all apprised of what we are working on and how we are trying to improve the service. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.

Regards,
the CrossBrowserTesting team
P.S. When those stimulus checks do start rolling in, remember that we do have a great deal going on right now. ;-)

IE8 RC1 browser testing

Microsoft's IE8 RC1 browser is now available on Windows XP and Vista for testing. RC1 stands for Release Candidate 1 - this is likely to be Microsoft's 'final cut' before the general release of IE8. Use this opportunity to check out your sites and correct any issues before the phone calls start coming in!

Look for the following configurations:


You can read more about IE8 RC1.

Thanks,
Ken

And the winner is...

yudhiecavalera! If you are looking for some design work, we recommend contacting him. Don't keep him too busy though, we'll be needing some more from him.

We were not sure what to expect from the contest at 99designs.com, but we are glad we tried it. We got a nice logo an we can't wait to put it into use. The place could use a little sprucing up. ;-)

Mike

Help us 'Redirect' our image

We are using 99designs.com to get some help creating a brand for our service. We are having a logo designed first and we hope to quickly follow that up with a website redesign.

If you are interested, the link is http://99designs.com/contests/16361. Since most of our users are designers, we are hoping that one or more of you will help us with establishing our brand and a new look. We hope to start a relationship with a designer and as I said, follow with a complete website overhall.

It isn't hard to tell that we are code monkeys and not designers. One indicator would be the way our site looks now (we butchered a really nice css template) and the other would be the fact we thought it was clever to say we are 'redirecting' our image with our $302 prize. For the less nerdy among you, a 302 is a server side redirect code. See, we need help (on sooo many levels).

So please help us out. We really would love for our users to help us shape the future of our site, both in functionality and form.

Mike

Future proof your site - Test the Windows 7 Beta and IE8!

We have added a few instances of the Windows 7 Beta to our list of browser testing configurations. You can use this configuration to perform a browser test of your site with IE 8 beta while running on Windows 7.

We set the configurations up last night, and I will have to say the Windows 7 install was really nice - it seemed stable and quick. Overall, I have to think this Windows 7 release is going to be an improvement over Windows Vista. There is a slight artifact that is sometimes showing up on the vnc display - the bottom task bar is sometimes black. Moving your cursor over it corrects this issue.

We have created a slideshow of some of the Windows 7 and IE8 features - this slideshow uses our builtin slideshow creator. Here is a preview of it:




View a full sized version of this Windows 7 / IE8 tour

We are busy working on delivering automated screenshot capability across browsers to CrossBrowserTesting.com, but felt our users would like the opportunity to try out WIndows 7.

The CrossBrowserTesting.com Team