Changelog

Recent Improvements to Urlbox

  • October 2024

    • Cookies: Better handling of requests with multiple cookies provided
    • Incident Response: Stability improvements to reduce the impact of future uptime incidents
    • Developer Documentation: Updates with more examples for many options
    • Pricing:: Business and Enterprise plans now shown on pricing page
    • Infrastructure: Various updates including database upgrade and migration

  • September 2024

    • Urlbox Dedicated Cluster: Improvements for high volume Enterprise customers.
    • Metadata: Fix issue impacting the collection of open graph data from some sites when using metadata: true option.
    • Video: Fix issue that resulted in bars at edges of mobile viewport videos (less than 500px wide).
    • PDF: Resolved new edge case where a page could cause PDF generation to fail.
    • Text Highlighting: Resolved new edge case where a page could cause highlighting feature to fail.
    • Performance: Various infrastructure improvements.

  • August 2024

    • Press Escape: The press_escape option now simulates an escape key press on initial load and after any delay conditions are met. This is useful for dismissing modals/popups that don't show on initial page load.
    • Refresh Options: Added refresh and refresh_after_scoll options for reloading a page before taking a screenshot. This helps remove banners and popups that only show to first-time visitors.
    • Enhanced Scroll Detection: Improved the algorithm for detecting scroll containers. This reduced the number of situations that can prevent full page screenshots from rendering correctly.
    • Save Formats in Sandbox: Introduced options to the sandbox UI to save HTML, markdown, and metadata along with a screenshot.
    • Video Audio Recording: Introduced support for recording website audio when making video screenshots.
    • Video Codec: Added the video_codec option to choose between h264, vp8 and vp9 codecs.
    • Video Length: Removed the 100-second cap for videos, allowing longer video recordings.
    • Video Scrolling Screenshots: Added a video_dont_scroll_back option to prevent return to top of page when not required.
    • Video Easing Options: Introduced easing options for scrolling screenshots making them customizable via a dropdown in the sandbox.
    • Improved validation: Improved validation of latitude, longitude and accuracy options to surface location errors sooner.
    • Website Update: Refreshed parts of our website to better reflect current uses of Urlbox and added a security page to start sharing more about how we safely render your screenshots.

  • July 2024

    • Screenshot timing: Full page screenshots for a small number of sites with cookie banners were rendering as viewport only. This was because clicking accept was triggering a full page reload.
    • Infrastructure enhancement: More flexible storage options for enterprise customers.
    • Sticky headers: Some sticky headers were not displaying in full page mode.
    • Modal hiding: Ability to detect more popup modals and remove them from screenshots.
    • Screenshot width: Limit width when full_width not specified to avoid extreme viewport sizes in some scenarios.
    • Build pipeline: Internal tooling improvements to support our growing team.
    • Banner display: Add support for Shopify universal banner - no longer hidden by default.
    • Engine version: engine_version option can now be set at a project level in the dashboard and on sandbox requests.
    • Video: Fix video rendering failures experienced in the latest version of engine.
    • One Million Screenshots: Introduced our fresh way to explore the top million homepages.

  • June 2024

    • S3 Configuration: Specify object locked buckets, ensuring no modifications are possible after creation. Added support for multipart uploads to these buckets.
    • Platform Option: Added a new platform option. See our blog post on performance improvements for more details.
    • Cookie Banners: Improved removal of new cookie banners.
    • PDF Margins: Updated PDF margin behaviour to match Chrome.
    • Rendering Pipeline: Adjusted timing to resolve a new edge case.
    • Debugging Tooling: Enhanced debugging tools and improved error logging.
    • UI Improvements: Improved UI in the sandbox for switching between viewport, full-page, and selector options.
    • Billing: Fixed issues in the billing experience for returning customers.
    • General Enhancements: Various infrastructure, security, and performance improvements.

  • May 2024

    • Engine Version: Introduced engine_version option. See our blog post for more details.
    • Debugging Tooling: Improved to resolve more edge cases.
    • Blank Images: Fixed issues causing blank images when Puppeteer resizes the viewport.
    • SVG Generation: Resolved an edge case causing timeouts.
    • Scrolling Behaviour: Adjusted to improve performance and address lazy loading image failures.
    • Puppeteer GPU Bug: Resolved a bug with Puppeteer using the GPU.
    • Billing: Enhanced billing processes and introduced new pricing for legacy users.
    • Onboarding Flow: Improved onboarding for new users.
    • Error View: Added renderId to the error view on the dashboard.
    • Project/API Key Management: Enhanced management for multiple projects and API keys.
    • UI Improvements: Improved the UI for adding S3 credentials.

  • April 2024

    • Form Redesign: Updated login, signup, reset, and confirm password forms to a new design.
    • Render Counting Logic: Improved to ensure accurate dashboard statistics.
    • Screenshot Handling: Resolved an issue affecting screenshots due to certain CORS configurations.
    • Puppeteer Configuration: Updated Chrome arguments in Puppeteer to handle new edge cases.
    • Page State Evaluation: Resolved issues caused by website overrides on JSON objects used for page state evaluation.
    • Welcome Arnold: Our newest team member.

  • March 2024

    • Cookie Banner Handling: Improved methods to hide more cookie banners.
    • Screenshot Timeout: Resolved an edge case causing timeouts for some screenshots taller than 2048px.
    • Selector Algorithm: Updated the algorithm for finding selectors to address lazy loading elements.
    • Marketing Site: Enhanced navigation to provide easier access to resources.
    • Blog: Layout improvements.

  • February 2024

    • Metadata: Improved extraction process.
    • HTML Post Handling: Fixed an issue blocking HTML fragments over 1 MB in post requests; now supports up to 10 MB.
    • Scrolling: Resolve issue where timeout triggered before reaching bottom of page.
    • Rendering Engine: Add handling for websites that set console.log to null.

  • January 2024

    • Urlbox.com: We’ve moved from urlbox.io
    • Markdown: Improved markdown rendering stability.
    • Metadata Enhancements: Added url_requested and url_resolved to metadata to surface redirections. Fix issue where URL would fallback to example.com.
    • Auto Crop: Introduced an auto_crop option to eliminate blank areas in screenshots.
    • Demo Bookings: Now accepting bookings for live demonstrations.
    • We’re hiring!: Seeking a Full Stack TypeScript Developer