Browshot blog

Browshot has acquired the screenshot service Thumbalizr.com. Thumbalizr is one of the oldest screenshot service still in business. It was started in 2007.

There will be no impact to the Browshot users. While Thumbalizr and Browshot will share the same platform in the coming months, Thumbalizr will use separate instances. We have added a server to the Browshot back-end to increase our capacity.

This acquisition shows the commitment of the Browshot team to be a major player in the screenshot market. We are committed to grow our business and to make Browshot your reliable partner.

Thumbalizr focuses on simplicity. The subscription-based service is going to remain the same. Thumbalizr will use the Browshot platform.

Browshot is the most powerful screenshot service. Browshot offers unique features such as automated uploads to S3, custom requests (cookies, POST data, custom JavaScript, etc.), mobile browsers like the iPhone and Android, etc.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any question about Browshot, Thumbalizr or the acquisition.

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We have scheduled an upgrade of Browshot on Friday March 6th, 2014 at 9:00pm PST until 10:00pm PST. We expect less than 5 minutes of downtime. During this time, the website and the API may return errors.

We are adding a server to our infrastructure to increase our screenshot capacity. We will post updates on this post during the maintenance window.

Upgrade

• 9:00pm PST: upgrade started
• 9:01pm PST: back-end restart
• 9:04pm PST: upgrade complete

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We have scheduled an upgrade of our back-end on Friday January 24th, 2014 at 9:00pm PST until 10:00pm PST. We expect less than 5 minutes of downtime. During this time, the website and the API may return errors.

We will post updates on this post during the maintenance window.

Upgrade

• 9:43pm PST: upgrade started
• 10:56pm PST: back-end restart
• 11:04pm PST: upgrade complete

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Happy New Year!

We have released the API 1.14 which includes:

• batch requests: get thousands of screenshots from a text file. More details below.
• JPEG: choose your screenshots in PNG or JPEG
• multiple screenshots of the same page

All of these features were requested by our customers. Don't hesitate to contact us if you need anything.

Batch requests

Download a ZIP of all your screenshots

It is now easy to get hundreds or thousands of screenshots from your dashboard. Upload a text file with the list of URLs (1 URL per line), choose your parameters (screenshot size, browser, etc.) and voila!

You will get a ZIP file with all the screenshots as well as a CSV file (which can be opened with a text editor or Excel) that maps each image file with its URL.

Request thousands of screenshots from your dashboard

We provide an API as well to create new batch request and to track them.

JPEG format

While PNG is a better image format for most cases, we now offer JPEG format as well. You can specify format=jpeg in the screenshot/thumbnail API call.

Multiple screenshots of the same page

You can take multiple screenshots of the same page, for example 3 screenshots every 10 seconds.

And more...

We have increased our screenshot capacity by a factor of 5 on all desktop browsers. We've made additional improvements in the rendering of mobile devices.

We have removed our CDN offering. We can offer much better prices with our distributed Browshot hosting.

>I wish everybody a happy new year. I'm sure it will be an exciting year for Browshot!

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This week-end we switched for a centralized access to our server in Germany to a distributed access through UK, US, Australia and Germany.

DNS resolution time is just one parameter that makes a website faster. Here is the average RTT to resolve browshot.com (data from APM Cloud Monitor).

Before

After

As expected, countries close to a new access point saw the biggest reduction in RTT.

We are working on making our architecture more distributed and more redundant.

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