Litmus blog

A login experiment

2009-06-28T12:16:12Z

Following on from a blog post by Jakob Nielsen about the usability of password fields, and a follow up by Bruce Schneier we decided to have a little experiment with the Litmus login page.

We realised that whenever we get the option to unmask a password while entering one in everyday desktop apps (specifically Mac OS X) we normally do it. We thought it'd be worth giving this a go on Litmus.

From now on you'll be able to mask or unmask your password while logging into Litmus, by default we'll keep it masked but feel free to uncheck the box if you'd like to see exactly what you are entering. In order to trigger browser password saving functionality our javascript flips the field back to a password before submitting.

Happy 4th Birthday

2009-06-07T20:12:29Z

Today Litmus is four years old. We launched the service (then called SiteVista), on June 7, 2005.

That feels like a very long time ago now. When we first started it was just David and I working part time, whilst doing freelance work. Now we're a team of six.

My thanks to all our customers who've made this possible. We love what we do and are committed to building the best testing tools in the world.

Here's to the next four years!

Automated email testing with a desktop application

2009-05-26T13:45:48Z

Geert De Laet recently contacted me to tell me about a desktop application he built. It helps his designers test their emails more efficiently using Litmus. Geert works for LUON, a company in Belgium with an email marketing product called EmailGarage. Here's a screenshot of Geert's application:

The designers at LUON were put off testing their emails early in the design process because they'd need to upload the images and HTML for their templates first.

"This led to the fact that the emails were only tested last minute when everything was put in order to actually send the email," Geert told me, "and we have a couple of Litmus accounts, which made it even more difficult for the designers."

Geert set up a network drive—accessible from the web—where the designers can copy/paste their email designs into a folder. His desktop application asks for their HTML file, then automatically changes the image references inside it. Finally, it displays a preview of the email and sends it to the correct Litmus account.

The application uses the static email addresses for LUON's Litmus accounts to send in the email test to Litmus, making it a very straightforward integration project.

He has plans to streamline the process even further, eliminating the manual copying of files and instead uploading automatically to a cloud storage service. "Another thing I'd possibly add is a check on the weight of the email, so I can make sure the designers have optimised their images!"

My thanks to Geert for sharing details of his application with us. If you've built something with Litmus I'd be fascinated to hear about it.

Email, Twitter and IM notifications

2009-05-20T12:55:35Z

Wouldn't it be nice to set your email or browser test running, then be alerted the moment it's finished? From today, Litmus can send you these notifications by email, Twitter, Gtalk or AIM.

To set up your notifications, just start a new test in your Litmus account. Once your test is processing you'll be offered a link to configure your notifications:

This follows nicely from my previous post about setting expectations. By being able to get on with other tasks whilst your test is processed, it feels quicker because you're being more productive with your time.

This feature works particularly well if you're using a static email test address. First set up your email notifications, then send us the newsletter to be tested (to your static address). As soon as your results are ready, you'll get an email back with a direct link to view them. It's much simpler than visiting your account to hunt down the results.

If you're building your own web applications, you might be interested to know that we're using MessagePub for our Gtalk and AIM notifications. They have a great API that makes it easy to start sending custom IM alerts without needing to maintain your own bots.

A hint of what's to come

2009-05-20T09:59:25Z

Last week we received our first batch of iPod Touch devices.

Our current development focus is on launching a comprehensive range of mobile devices, for both email and browser testing.

We can't give an exact date for the launch just yet, but these iPod Touches will be being shipped to the data centre soon!

Automating Litmus tests at Yahoo!

2009-05-19T09:57:29Z

Tyler Hall wrote to tell us how his team at Yahoo! is using Litmus as part of their deployment process. I think it's a fascinating example of how to use Litmus. Note that it is fairly technical and involves some manual configuration, though.

Tyler's PHP script (which is available on GitHub) automates the process of starting a browser test on Litmus. He's set this up as a deployment task in Capistrano, which they're using to deploy their site to their staging and production environments.

Each time they deploy a new version of their site, their script triggers a Litmus test of their pages, using the A-grade browsers recommended by Yahoo.

He explains that these automated tests are useful for a number of reasons...

It starts the test faster, so by the time we get around to checking the results, they're complete or nearly done.

Perhaps more importantly, this provides a visual history of our changes. All of our code is in SVN, of course, but SVN doesn't help when your boss asks "when did that background color change?" or "are you sure the site was working on April 23rd?". Having a log of what our sites looked like for each revision/push is invaluable.

We use SVN and Capistrano at Litmus to deploy our site, so I'm going to use this script to save myself time when we make design changes.

My thanks to Tyler for sharing the script and his process for testing at Yahoo. If anyone else has any interesting ways they're using Litmus please email me or leave a comment here. I'd love to hear about them.

Setting expectations

2009-05-05T13:08:10Z

Today we've rolled out a new feature that shows how long your test will take to complete. It's a simple addition to the user interface, but behind the scenes it's taking live statistical data and adapting it to the specific options you've chosen for your test.

It's part of something we've been thinking a lot about recently: setting expectations. We've found that under different conditions people have very different expectations. By setting these expectations correctly software can feel faster to the user, even if it's not.

Expectations for a web application

When you start a test using Litmus, it can take a few minutes to complete. Considering everything that's happening in the background, (your email being sent, our servers loading your email, generating screenshots, uploading...) a few minutes is pretty quick for that to happen 15+ times. But if you're simply sitting watching the results screen, even a few minutes can feel like a long wait. A watched pot never boils.

Think about other web applications you've used—rarely would you need to wait that long. As a result, we sometimes get feedback from new users that Litmus feels slow. After their first few tests our users begin to adjust their expectations, but it's that first time experience we wanted to improve.

Expectations for a desktop application

This issue became even more intriguing when we launched Alkaline. Alkaline is a Mac desktop client for Litmus. The user is doing the same task (submitting a test and waiting for the results). The task takes the same time. Yet we got way more feedback that it was slow. Even when their test was completed in less than a minute, some people would still complain it was too slow.

Setting realistic expectations

From this feedback, we learnt that people don't expect a web app to take more than a few moments to perform a task, and that people expect tasks in a desktop app to be almost instantaneous.

For us that's a problem. We're constantly trimming down our test times with system improvements and additional capacity, but our tests will never complete instantly. So, we're now beginning to set people's expectations better with small interface improvements like this one. The next version of Alkaline will address this too.

If you're working on your own products, it's worth considering if you need to manage your users' expectations—especially if it's not obvious how long a task will take.

Introducing Jonathan

2009-04-08T14:40:51Z

Last week there was a new addition to our team here at Litmus. Jonathan Powell has joined us to work on our back end testing system.

As we continue to grow, it's fantastic to have an extra pair of hands to help us build new features even faster. You'll see the first results of Jonathan's work in the next few weeks and I think you'll be delighted with what he's added.

Welcome to Litmus, Jonathan, it's great to have you on board!

Campaign Monitor partnership

2009-04-02T18:27:52Z

We've always been fans of Campaign Monitor, and we're delighted to announce that Litmus email testing is now built right into their excellent email marketing application.

We've been discussing this with them for almost two years now, so it's very nice to see it come to fruition!

I should add that they're currently using another testing service to provide some of the email clients that Litmus doesn't yet cover (like BlackBerry). Rest assured, Litmus will have a full line up of mobile email clients available for testing very soon. Including a certain hand-held Apple device.

We now have over 30 partnerships with email service providers like Campaign Monitor, and we'd like to continue to make Litmus email testing available to as many people as possible. If you're interested in discussing a partnership please get in touch with James who can run through the details with you.

Introducing Alkaline

2009-03-26T23:05:53Z

Today we're releasing a new product: Alkaline. It's a desktop application that lets you run Windows browser tests on your Mac, using Litmus.

It even integrates with other Mac applications like Coda and TextMate, so you can run browser tests from right inside these popular design tools.

To see exactly how it works, watch the two minute screencast I recorded earlier today, then download it and try for yourself.

It's interesting that whilst there have been recent announcements from Adobe and Microsoft about their new browser testing software, no-one has so far offered anything specifically for Mac users. We're Mac users ourselves here at Litmus, and I know many of our customers are, too. I hope Alkaline helps to fill that gap.

I know Alkaline 1.0 will be very beneficial to Mac-based web designers, but I'd like to see it evolve into the de-facto testing tool on the Mac. We've got some great ideas for where Alkaline could go in the future, but I'd love to hear yours too.

Either drop us an email, or leave a comment below. Let's talk about how we can make Alkaline the best possible browser testing tool for Mac-based designers.

By the way, Alkaline was built by the folks at Shiny Development. If you're looking for any Mac (or iPhone) application development I'd highly recommend them.

You could be sending “spam” without knowing it

2009-02-13T01:12:31Z

I heard a great story recently from one of our customers about his experience with spam filters. Rick Ross at DZone told me he's always careful to test his emails across a range of spam filters - in particular SpamAssassin...

One of our authors is named "Adam Bien" and once we found ourselves hitting an Ambien [a prescription sleeping drug] filter because his real name is too close to the pattern SpamAssassin uses to test for that term.

Without checking the results beforehand, we'd never have seen that one coming!

Have you had a similar experience to Rick?

(Of course, Litmus tests your emails against SpamAssassin, along with 14 other popular spam filters.)

Free testing every weekend in February

2009-02-09T22:49:35Z

During the next three weekends (starting Saturday 14 February), all Litmus testing will be completely free for all our users!

This means anyone with a free Litmus account can run an unlimited number of full browser tests and full email tests across our entire range of browsers and email clients.

Since our recent expansion we have 85% spare capacity at weekends. We thought: Why not put that capacity to good use? Perhaps you have website for your side project you'd like to test, or an email newsletter for a community group. You'll be able to use the full power of Litmus to test it thoroughly any weekend during the rest of February.

If you don't already have a Litmus account you can sign up for free now so you're ready for the weekend.

If you're already a paying customer, you'll be allocated dedicated resources to ensure your tests are completed as quickly as they've always been. (You'll also continue to have access to our spam filter testing, which will remain exclusive to paying customers.)

Everyone else will be able to sample the full power of Litmus from midnight Friday through midnight Sunday (Eastern Standard Time) on the weekends of 14^th, 21^st and 28^th February.

We'd love to hear how you're using the free weekend testing. Drop us a line or leave a comment here.

Mobile Me now available

2009-01-30T22:37:45Z

Today we released support for Apple's Mobile Me email service. You can now test your emails on Mobile Me using Litmus!

Mobile Me has a really nice user interface, as you'd expect from Apple. In terms of email rendering it's pretty good, too. You can read the full report with details of CSS compatibility over on the Email Standards Project site.

Mobile Me is available to all Litmus subscribers and resellers immediately.

Screencast: Understanding desktop email clients

2009-01-28T22:13:34Z

We've just released our first screencast. It's available in our brand new resources area. In this screencast, I explain how the major desktop email clients actually render emails. Understanding their similarities can significantly reduce the time you spend testing.

It's useful for anyone involved in HTML email design, and it'll give you some insights that'll make you re-think your testing process.

We'll be releasing more screencasts on a fairly regular basis, so keep an eye on the blog to get notified as soon as they're available.

As always, I'd welcome your comments. Tell me what you like, or don't like, and what topics you'd like to see me cover in future episodes.

Photos from our recent meet up

2009-01-07T21:21:18Z

At the end of December we had an all-staff meet up in London to plan our direction for the next six months. Since we are often working remotely, it was particularly good to catch up in person. I think it's important to spend some time discussing things face-to-face, even though working remotely works well for the most part.

We spent 4 days working together and have got some fantastic ideas and plans for the upcoming months. We will of course discuss those in more detail as we get further into the development, but you'll see the first results in the next week or two.

Check out some photos from the meet up on Flickr if you'd like to put a face to the name of someone you've been corresponding with!