These managed solutions can provide value for large companies, especially ones that fall into a DIY trap.
Solve problems with computers.
The link is showing up as https://sourcesort.com/interview/browserless.io instead of https://browserless.io
I was trying to do that on Browserless but couldn't get the final file download to work (I adapted Stack Overflow code linked below to put all the web pages images into a ZIP file and download that) - presently I'm running this on a Google Cloud Function, which is working but I'd rather outsource it to you, especially since the function chokes on large web pages (possibly it needs more RAM than the 2GB limit currently available in GCF?).
curl -X POST \ https://chrome.browserless.io/scrape \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -d '{ "url": "https://reddit.com/", "elements": [{ "selector": "img" }] }'
This will get all the <img> tags on a page and return their attributes (which includes their sources). If you wanted to do scripts as well, just add a new object to the elements array with the "selector" of "script".
For instance, if you're already programming and working 8+ hours a day in your home, the last thing you want to do is more of it. One of the biggest things you'll want to do is get out more often since you're home a lot, and staying home to work on a side-project doesn't sound awfully appealing.
The web app we are testing right now (SaaS for architects) makes heavy use of canvas elements and can't be tested headless.
Just as a bit of feedback, on the linked site you write:
>Browserless is simply a tiny web-server that “productionalizes” all the stuff about headless browsers and their automation capabilities.
I find that both hard to parse (productionalizes? wat) and saying nothing. How about "a tiny web-server that helps you use headless browsers without the hassle of setting them up on your environment"
The only downside to using a lot of IaaS type stuff like this is almost every month something goes down - Github or Azure or Appveyor etc, and this is another thing that could go down, even for a few minutes, and basically the CI is stuffed, or pingdom goes heywire. But this is a more general problem with cloudifying all the things, not with this particular service.
When thinking about the viability of a business, developers commonly make the mistake of assuming that nobody would pay for something that's possible for them to code up themselves.
Sure, many of us write code all day and love it. But most people have other responsibilities, value their time highly, and (correctly) prefer to pay reasonable amounts of money so they can spend their time doing more important or profitable things.
There's a lot of complexity in managing and even building the thing from the start -- and then you have to support it. If you're working in a large org then there's a chance that you can just DIY it, however for small-medium businesses this isn't practical and it's a waste of time (their most precious resource).
I like to think of it as a managed database. Sure, you can freely download postgres in a container and you're up and going, however there's a lot more costs to it than just that. Having a fully-managed database saves you time and other non-tangibles that it can be worth the cost. Just depends on your circumstances.