Phantomjs

Web developers understand that one of the most tedious aspects of writing a site comes from the process of testing and debugging. The more complicated a site is, the more there is that can go wrong, and digging through all the potential problems in search of issues worth addressing can be a monumental task. Given the complicated and patchwork family of languages that go into a modern site's creation, it can often be hard to know how well code is going to translate in a visual capacity. That's where headless browsers like PhantomJS come in. They allow you to run the website as any normal user; but instead of displaying the graphical user interface we normally see when we browse the web, users see the layers of code that underlie the functions. This allows testers to identify problems that might not be readily apparently through the GUI and to pinpoint the source of those problems more effectively. PhantomJS, a browser built on the fundamentals of JavaScript, has become one of the most trusted headless browsers in the industry. PhantomJS' high level of compatibility is part of the reason it's seen so much traction in the industry. PhantomJS isn't a test framework, but it offers standard compatibility with over a dozen popular frameworks, including Preamble, Jasmine, and Capybara. Since PhantomJS is an open source project, developers have also introduced a number of related side projects that help improve the reach and functionality of the browser. Casper.js, a framework that helps build scripted navigation and testing, is one of the most popular, but Lotte and WebSpecter both have their own useful roles in site testing. PhantomJS works with Windows, Mac OSX, and Unix operating systems (including Linux). It also functions well with continuous integration systems like Heroku, Amazon EC2, and Iron.io. PhantomJS also includes website screen shot functionality. This does more than just capture a picture on your screen. It allows you to take a block of HTML code and then automatically convert it into the screen format. PhantomJS' flexibility allows reliable conversion even with HTML that has been styled with CSS or sites that include images, SVG, and canvas elements. While this software's primary purpose is testing and debugging, there are also a number of analytical applications. Since it allows the inspection of network traffic, it's a great choice for running studies of network behavior and performance. It can also be used to automate web sites, taking stress off the hands of your developers and letting them move forward with new projects rather than worrying about the upkeep of old resources. While PhantomJS requires other pieces of software to work correctly, it's one of the best headless browsers on the market, and its high level of compatibility means you'll have to worry less about it running efficiently. It's a reliable workhorse that any developer would be lucky to have in their tool kit.