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Cross Browser Screenshots

One of the challenges of web development is the plethora of web browsers & OS combinations and the differences in rendering between them. Normally you need to test in atleast 3 to 4 “Level 1″ browsers your work before releasing wide. Beyond this number, it becomes expensive to maintain all the different hardware/os/browsers available. There has been commercial sites available for some years now offering screenshots taken in different browsers. Now you have a free version at use Browsershots.org. Check out here for the various versions it has for Vishwak.com website.


The way it works, is it queues you job requests and processes them in multiple machines (shotfactories). The best part is the entire source-code that makes this work is available – so you can go check out how they made this whole thing work across platforms.


Update (15/Nov/06): A new site that offers limited (only till viewport) for IE 6 & 7 a similar service is IE Web Renderer.

TV Antenna

TV Antenna’s were a common thing on every building top in Chennai City till about a decade back. With the advent of Cable connections it has become a thing of the past and virtually not to be seen anywhere. I realized how scarce this technology has become only today – when my 3 year old son while playing in the terrace asked “What are those Rods in the nearby house?”. It took few seconds to understand what he meant – I had a good laugh while explaining him about it!


A lone TV Antenna in the neighbourhood
(A Lone TV Antenna in my neighbourhood)


In my childhood Antenna’s where very special, especially for me. I have spent hours working on installing multi-band antennas with boosters and then tuning our TV for hours to days – just to catch up signal of Sri Lanka’s Tamil channel (if I remember right it was called Rupavahini) transmissions. The best I could manage (being in Chennai) has been few disturbed screens with audio :-)