July 2019 Summaries

BrowserStack, a mobile device data center company, has launched its newest North American facility in the East Coast. Major brands such as Mastercard, Time Warner, National Geographic Society, Macy's, Home Depot, and ESPN use BrowserStack to test across 2000+ real devices and release software faster. The new data center will provide significant performance gains for customers in the US-East region. With this addition, BrowserStack now has six mobile and desktop data centers across US West, US East, and EU. Its geographically distributed footprint ensures fast and reliable tests by automatically routing them to the closest data center. The company continues to invest in enabling faster testing for customers across a wide range of devices.

Apple has released the new iOS 13 Beta, introducing several exciting features such as Dark Mode, Sign in with Apple and Email Relay Service, Background Tasks, enhanced privacy and security measures, and other updates like a new 3D version of Maps, swipe typing, audio sharing over AirPods, and improved performance. Developers should prepare for iOS 13 by conducting regression testing, ensuring UI compatibility across devices, and adding new features to their apps. BrowserStack offers an exclusive iOS 13 beta for real device testing.

In the Open Source Spotlight series by BrowserStack, Leonardo Balter, a core contributor to QUnit—a popular JavaScript unit testing framework, shares his journey in open source development. Leo started contributing to open source projects back in the mid-90s and has been actively involved with QUnit since 2009. He emphasizes the importance of working with great project managers to handle context switching effectively when managing multiple projects. Leo also highlights the value of an inclusive and diverse programming community, as it provides opportunities for learning and growth. In his spare time, he enjoys playing guitar and video games, while focusing on parenting.

Tiny Speck developed an internal communication tool while creating the online multiplayer game Glitch. This tool was later launched to the public as Slack and quickly gained popularity, with over 10 million users logging in daily. Slack's integrations make it a valuable office communication tool, offering more than 1,500 options for users. However, choosing which integrations to use can be challenging due to the number of choices available. The article lists six essential Slack apps for developers: GitHub, Jenkins, Jira, New Relic, Azure Pipelines, and BrowserStack. Each integration offers unique benefits and features tailored to meet specific development needs. For example, GitHub's integration provides updates on project activities without leaving Slack, while the Jenkins integration enables teams to receive build notifications automatically. Other integrations include Jira for agile software development teams, New Relic for monitoring web and mobile application performance, Azure Pipelines for managing pipeline events, and BrowserStack for testing web and mobile apps across various devices and browsers. These tools help developers stay updated on their projects' progress and ensure smooth collaboration within teams.

In an interview with BrowserStack, Álvaro Trigo, creator of fullPage.js, shares his journey in developing the open-source library and how it has impacted his life. He discusses how he came up with the idea for fullPage.js while working on a project at his previous job and decided to build it from scratch as a learning experience. Initially offering fullPage.js for free, Álvaro later began charging for certain features and extensions after receiving numerous requests from developers. He also talks about his favorite development tools, including Chrome DevTools, Photoshop, GitHub, and BrowserStack. Álvaro shares insights into his daily work routine, which involves checking emails, addressing issues on GitHub, working on side projects, and learning new technologies. He emphasizes the importance of persistence in open-source development and offers advice to developers who are new to the field.

In this webinar, Simon Stewart and Praveen Umanath discussed the upcoming changes in Selenium WebDriver with the adoption of W3C WebDriver protocol. They explained how to upgrade from JSON wire protocol to W3C WebDriver using BrowserStack's capability generator tool. They also addressed questions related to open source support, security, real devices, and other features like downloads and system file uploads.