This blog post was originally written by Bradley Johnson from Netlify.
Netlify’s collaborative Deploy Previews are packed full of features to help developers gather better feedback from their reviewers, including tools to comment, screen record, and annotate right from the actual preview link. Deploy previews are convenient for reviewers because they can leave high-quality feedback right from the preview, and it’s easier for developers because every review gets automatically synced to the GitHub pull request or productivity tools like Clubhouse.io, Linear, or Trello.
Since there are so many helpful features stuffed into Deploy Previews, we wanted to stop and take a moment to spotlight one of our favorites: the View on BrowserStack, which makes it easy for developers to reproduce a reviewer’s browser environment with just one click. If you’re new to BrowserStack, it is a cloud platform for testing on 2,000+ real browsers and devices that is used by four million developers around the world.
Netlify and BrowserStack: Partnering for a better developer experience
When we introduced collaborative Deploy Previews in May, we included a feature that uses browser metadata to reproduce reviewers’ browser environments. It’s powered by a partner integration with BrowserStack.
Inside the collapsable browser details in every Deploy Preview comment (both in the Netlify Drawer and GitHub PR feed), users can click the View on BrowserStack link. They are taken to the BrowserStack Live Dashboard, where they can test the browser-device combination that mirrors the reviewer’s browser environment.
No more asking reviewers for their viewport settings or browser version details. Now, developers can click a link and see exactly what a reviewer was looking at when they filed a bug. It makes troubleshooting frontend QA issues easier.
Extended free BrowserStack minutes for Netlify users
Collaborating with Deploy Previews is getting even sweeter! We’re partnering with BrowserStack to provide a full 60 minutes of free testing for Netlify users. That means every Netlify user gets 2x free BrowserStack testing minutes compared to regular free trial users. This offer is available to new BrowserStack users that sign up via the Netlify integration, and only for a limited time. Create a BrowserStack account to get started testing!
Try it out
Haven’t tried out Netlify’s collaborative Deploy Previews yet? Collaborative Deploy Previews are fully enabled on every Netlify account. We've even introduced a new free Reviewer role so you can invite the whole team to collaborate together. For helpful tips for your Reviewers, check out our blog post on how to give meaningful feedback with collaborative Deploy Previews.
