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Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

queenjs.com

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Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#11

Post by Drakim »

dspillett wrote: post #10
retube wrote: post #2

that's pretty cool. amazon could resell your free browser cycles.

I've been saying for a while that I'm surprised no-one has written a BitCoin miner in JS and started pushing it out to connecting browsers. Given how much time a pop-under advert can sit no someone's machine before they notice it could be relatively lucrative. You'd not get a lot of processing per client per block of time even with the best current JS JIT compilers (especially as GPU mining is where it is at now), bu…

I seem to recall that somebody HAS written a BitCoin miner in JS. It was even posted at HN. Can't find it now though.

Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#12

Post by Kenan »

dspillett wrote: post #10
retube wrote: post #2

that's pretty cool. amazon could resell your free browser cycles.

I've been saying for a while that I'm surprised no-one has written a BitCoin miner in JS and started pushing it out to connecting browsers. Given how much time a pop-under advert can sit no someone's machine before they notice it could be relatively lucrative. You'd not get a lot of processing per client per block of time even with the best current JS JIT compilers (especially as GPU mining is where it is at now), bu…

Embedable miners have been done before.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9042.msg130817#msg13...

Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#13

Post by reid »

A couple years ago, I used Node.js to build a tool that would run tests in iframes. It's similar to the OP's tool Thrill, but mine was a lot simpler. http://thrilljs.com

The problem we (the YUI project) ran into was test failures that would occur only within iframes. We found lots of iframe-only quirks that were useful to know about, but were also distracting since we wanted to make sure using YUI in a typical browser context works first. (I've talked to jQuery's TestSwarm maintainer and they've had similar problems with iframes.)

The tool we use, Yeti, was since rewritten to not require an iframe. http://yeti.cx

I continue to work on Yeti, and there's a lot of interesting things we have done (using multiple browser instances to speed up testing, launching browsers automatically, CI integration) and hope to do (code coverage, performance measurements). Help wanted!

It's neat to see this kind of thing become more popular, and I hope these projects can make testing easier for everyone.

Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#15

Post by sigil »

retube wrote: post #2

that's pretty cool. amazon could resell your free browser cycles.

This isn't a new idea, although we have yet to see someone execute it well. Plura Processing tried it back in 2008. Here's their Show HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347359

Plura ran into trouble because they built a pay-for-grid computing platform where the nodes were unsuspecting users:

http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/our-response...

Personally I'd like to see a SETI@Home or Folding@Home in the browser first.

Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#17

Post by ozanonline »

reid wrote: post #13

A couple years ago, I used Node.js to build a tool that would run tests in iframes. It's similar to the OP's tool Thrill, but mine was a lot simpler. http://thrilljs.com The problem we (the YUI project) ran into was test failures that would occur only within iframes. We found lots of iframe-only quirks that were useful to know about, but were also distracting since we wanted to make sure using YUI in a typical browse…

What were the sorts of issues you faced with iframes? One major issue I found so far was alerts blocking the ui thread, which was easy enough to fix by disabling them. The other major issue was around CORS, which is resolved by proxying requests.

Re: Queen – A Framework To Run Scripts On Many Remote Browsers Using Node.js

#19

Post by ozanonline »

jakub_g wrote: post #9

Very similar conceptually to a tool (Attester) that our team has released a couple of months ago. https://github.com/ariatemplates/attester/ We use it as a distributed way to perform tests in our main project (Aria Templates: https://github.com/ariatemplates/ariatemplates ). The tool is able to use PhantomJS (configurable number of instances) and "normal" browsers which can connect in the same manner (by opening a UR…

Cool, you might be interested in Testacular also, a similar project to yours. The main differentiator for Thrill/Queen will be that Queen acts as a central server which anyone in the network can execute tests on. So if you have many developers, they don't each have to setup their own browser pool.
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