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Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

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Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#21

Post by kpsychwave »

josh_carterPDX wrote: post #20

We use Hotjar recordings to see what people see from various regions. It's pretty useful in that we can see how the page loads for users outside of the US. But beyond that, we can see what they interact with on the page. This seems useful from a very high level, but if someone wants more data points I'm sure they would use something more robust.

As of right now, we provide uptime and visual testing. If you have advanced functionality that varies by region, something like IP spoofing might work best for your needs.

But for most companies use GeoIP targeting for things like:

Currency and Dynamic Pricing Locale (date time formats, languages), Dynamic translation functionality Determining visitor origins Custom ads/messaging Redirection to local websites (Amazon, Google, Craigslist use this) IP-based blocking (for cyber attack protection)

I would think that something like Hotjar is more useful for studying user behavior (how it varies across regions) than testing website functionality.

I will have to to more digging to see if they do the actual recordings from servers in those particular regions, or if they just map geo-filtered data over a standard video recording (with the assumption that it renders the same everywhere)

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#24

Post by gavinpc »

corobo wrote: post #9
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's either my Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin, but the site's broken for me on Chrome 52 Ubuntu.

"The site's broken" on Hacker News, really? Put some effort into reporting the problem!

If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three locations," but there is no list of locations.

People, please use a try/catch when feature testing for localStorage. If cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever behavior you were trying to add. I see this on probably 60% of Show HN projects, but sometimes even on large sites.

Your core competency is testing web sites, right? I'd suggest making one of those 200 locations block cookies. You'll find 10x as many defects.

(edit And I'm assuming that localStorage is almost never really necessary for these sites, but that some bit of the framework tests for it without the developer even realizing it. So yes, I consider that a defect.)

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#25

Post by gavinpc »

gavinpc wrote: post #24
corobo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The site's broken" on Hacker News, really? Put some effort into reporting the problem!

If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three locations," but there is no list of locations. People, please use a try/catch when feature testing for localStorage . If cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever…

...for example, the first Show HN on the front page right now. Doesn't work at all when cookies are blocked—it just renders some stars and some chrome.

But okay, I'll run it in another browser. Wow, it's a really cool WebGL visualization of global temperatures. And what is it using localStorage for? It sets one key called `runOnce` to `true`. I think that could be considered optional. Easy to fix, if they knew about it.

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#26

Post by callumprentice »

gavinpc wrote: post #25
gavinpc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three locations," but there is no list of locations. People, please use a try/catch when feature testing for localStorage . If cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever…

...for example, the first Show HN on the front page right now. Doesn't work at all when cookies are blocked—it just renders some stars and some chrome. But okay, I'll run it in another browser. Wow, it's a really cool WebGL visualization of global temperatures. And what is it using localStorage for? It sets one key called `runOnce` to `true`. I think that could be considered optional. Easy to fix, if they knew about…

I'm looking to see if I can fix this now but I don't want to make risky changes while a few people are watching. Will look into it though - Cheers.!

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#27

Post by stevekemp »

callumprentice wrote: post #26
gavinpc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...for example, the first Show HN on the front page right now. Doesn't work at all when cookies are blocked—it just renders some stars and some chrome. But okay, I'll run it in another browser. Wow, it's a really cool WebGL visualization of global temperatures. And what is it using localStorage for? It sets one key called `runOnce` to `true`. I think that could be considered optional. Easy to fix, if they knew about…

I'm looking to see if I can fix this now but I don't want to make risky changes while a few people are watching. Will look into it though - Cheers.!

If you're too scared to make changes to your application, that's a great reason to start making sure you have test-cases, and a test-suite.

My toy side-project has a full regression test which is executed before any (automated) deploy/upgrade, for precisely this reason.

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#28

Post by kpsychwave »

bhartzer wrote: post #23

Looks like it still is encountering problems, I get a 403 error from London an ny. Might be cloudflare blocking it?

Thanks for that. I caught a 403 in the logs for PriceHipster, logs confirmed that CloudFlare (nginx/cloudflare) blocked it.

If it is yours, thanks for reporting it, I have pushed the fix down the pipeline. Its not giving a 403 anymore, but still doesn't render properly.

I have tried to debug it with a different engine but it looks like the site has JS based browser detection (not based on user agent strings). Since its a headless browser, some JS functionality is unavailable, and super dynamic sites break. Another limitation I am working around.

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#29

Post by kpsychwave »

gavinpc wrote: post #24
corobo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The site's broken" on Hacker News, really? Put some effort into reporting the problem!

If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three locations," but there is no list of locations. People, please use a try/catch when feature testing for localStorage . If cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever…

My app uses cookie-based sessions (as does HackerNews), so the authenticated section will not work if you have cookies disabled.

I tested in Chrome Win 10, with cookies disabled and privacy badger on and the capture page works fine. I want to debug the issue further to see whats preventing the locations from being displayed.

Have you tried clicking on the gear icon? That shows a list of locations.

Re: Show HN: GeoScreenshot – Test your website from many locations

#30

Post by kpsychwave »

gavinpc wrote: post #25
gavinpc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "Privacy Badger" blocks cookies, then it's probably the old "The operation is insecure." That's what I see. A message says "Please select up to three locations," but there is no list of locations. People, please use a try/catch when feature testing for localStorage . If cookies are blocked for the domain, trying to access storage will throw a security exception. This exception will almost definitely hose whatever…

...for example, the first Show HN on the front page right now. Doesn't work at all when cookies are blocked—it just renders some stars and some chrome. But okay, I'll run it in another browser. Wow, it's a really cool WebGL visualization of global temperatures. And what is it using localStorage for? It sets one key called `runOnce` to `true`. I think that could be considered optional. Easy to fix, if they knew about…

I think this is for a different app, could you please move the comment there?
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