Introducing happo.io

Four years ago, Joe Lencioni and I started building a screenshot testing tool that would help us find visual bugs before they went out into production. A while later we introduced our tool, then named Diffux, as an open source project at Camp Sass 2014. Like many screenshot diffing tools out there at the time, Diffux was all about diffing entire page screenshots.

Happo focuses on individual components instead of full-page screenshots. It gives you confidence that your code changes don’t result in visual bugs, and it helps you visualize the UI differences that you’re introducing.

Example of a diff found by happo. Diffs are rendered in magenta.

The open source version of Happo has helped numerous organizations make their UI more robust. With the introduction of happo.io, or Happo as a service if you wish, I hope to provide an even more useful tool. Here are some of the differences between happo.io (the service) and happo (the open source tool):

• happo.io works in other browsers than just Firefox
• happo.io speeds up CI runs by caching results remotely
• happo.io runs in parallel, further speeding things up
• happo.io has a more advanced report page

Happo.io is currently in beta mode. Once beta customers are happy and all milestones on this roadmap have been accomplished, we’ll launch publicly:

1. ✅ Add Firefox target (done September 2017)
2. ✅ Make it possible to test across different screen sizes (done September 2017)
3. ✅ Add Chrome target (done October 2017)
4. ✅ Add Internet Explorer target (done January 2018)
5. ✅ Make local development easier (done March 2018)

Become a Happo customer by signing up at happo.io. And make sure to follow our twitter account to get the latest updates.