PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#1

Post by wfunction » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 9:52 AM UTC

PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer
groups.google.com

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#2

Post by d--b » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:15 AM UTC

Wow, I'm very impressed. At this stage it is a very wise decision to step down and to focus onto something else, rather than to hold on to a project that will eventually disappear. It takes a lot of courage to move on from a project that had to be maintained for several years and that had such a reach.

We can only be thankful for all the good work that went into PhantomJS, and wish the maintainers the best of luck in their next endeavors.

Cheers!

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#3

Post by frik » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:15 AM UTC

That's quite sad.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#4

Post by redsummer » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:16 AM UTC

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers?

Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#5

Post by kasparsklavins » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:17 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Automated tests.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#6

Post by kowdermeister » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:18 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Server side rendering, testing, automation just to name a few.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#7

Post by askmike » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:18 AM UTC

kasparsklavins wrote: post #5

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Automated tests.

As well as scraping more JS heavy stuff.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#8

Post by malinens » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:18 AM UTC

My colleague from automatic testing says that phantomjs actually is much more stable than chrome...

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#9

Post by moxious » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:19 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #2

Wow, I'm very impressed. At this stage it is a very wise decision to step down and to focus onto something else, rather than to hold on to a project that will eventually disappear. It takes a lot of courage to move on from a project that had to be maintained for several years and that had such a reach. We can only be thankful for all the good work that went into PhantomJS, and wish the maintainers the best of luck in…

He says in his message it's been a slog for some time, looks like a good time to be done with it. Open source is great, we all like it, but demanding unpaid jobs can get old, too.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#10

Post by praptak » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:20 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Web scraping for sites that discourage simple robots by checking for JS or serving content via JS.

Also, the darker stuff like click fraud and all the other kinds of fraud where you pretend there are humans doing something when in fact there's just a bot.