Please Roast My Idea
the idea is basically a tool that grabs a screenshot of a particular web page(url) in the 4 major desktop browsers(chrome, edge, firefox, safari) and 2 major mobile browsers(chrome, safari).
what do you guys think? is this something you would pay for?
How about this... Instead of screenshot for UI testing against browsers, do a screenshot for mockup in mobile, laptop and desktop.
Let me elaborate. I put in a URL and I get an image of a hand holding a Samsung with the website loaded in the screen. Or, I get an image of a laptop with Chrome loaded up, and my website in view.
You get the idea?
yea I've definitely thought about this
I know a guy made this. But you would have to make the screenshot yourself. https://shotsnapp.com/
It's a great idea, and definitely useful. It also has been executed upon pretty well, see https://www.browserstack.com/screenshots
very similar
Interesting read : https://www.simplecto.com/building-own-screenshot-as-a-service-docker-django-selenium/
Running all four browsers in the cloud seems not so hard but is actually quite difficult to do at scale. I'm the founder of a ApiFlash, a screenshot API based on Chrome and I've experienced this pain. It's also quite a competitive niche. From the last competitor analysis I've done, there is at least 17 serious completitors with an API that can handle proxies, full pages, scrolling, capture timing etc.
Some void worth pursuing :
Love the CI/CD angle
The current inspect function within Chrome could allow you to mimic the change of viewpoints already. In addition, there are tools like responsive-viewer and Sizzy which show you how the page would look like in different viewpoints/browsers in real-time. I think just having the screenshots won't justify I pay for this service.
thanks for the honesty
I think you should frame it in terms of what problem you're solving. Why would I pay for such a tool? Is it for UI testing? Or maybe for printing out cool posters of your website?
I suspect the former, but you should always frame your idea in terms of a problem.
Looking to do it
Like browsershots.org?
yes but will be bringing in more focus on mobile
It's a good idea, but there are several companies doing something similar. I think the mobile-angle is more interesting. One common problem is figuring out how your site looks at different viewpoints.
thats part of the plan is to zero in on more mobile, but i'm trying to validate if its even something people care to use or pay for.
I think you'll have trouble. It's a very low barrier to entry and other sites can easily offer the same thing for free.
It may be a good business to get into in order to get an email list of potential customers that you can then market other related products to.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
thanks for your reply