Faster screenshots
Screenshots take only an average of 15s only, including the time to load the target page. But we are always trying to make the service better. Having even faster screenshots was the #1 improvement asked. We have heard you, and we have made several improvements.
Faster dashboard
Although most of the screenshots are done in 15 seconds or less, the dashboard was refreshed every 45 seconds only. This may have given the impression of slow screenshots too many users. The status of the screenshots is now updated every 2s.
Faster first screenshot
There used to be a delay of up to 15 second for the first screenshot requested on an idle virtual browser. This has been brought down to 1 second! The first screenshot should now be as fast as the following requests.
Faster page load
Most of the time required for a screenshot is spent waiting for the target page to load. We have tweaked all our desktop and mobile virtual browsers to browse the web faster. This should improve the loading time by about 15%.
We are looking at additional infrastructure improvements to decrease the load time of target pages.
We were able to roll out these improvements without any downtime, and without interrupting any of the screenshots in process.