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Category: WebXPRT 2015

WebXPRT 2015 Community Preview is available!

As we said yesterday, we’re releasing the community preview of a WebXPRT 2015 Community Preview. Members of the BenchmarkXPRT community can now run the community preview and publish results.

Run the community preview here.

After trying out the community preview, please send in your comments. Either post them to the forum or mail them to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com. If you mail information that’s of interest to the entire community, we may post an anonymous version of the comments to the forum.

Thanks for being part of the community,

Eric

Finally!

We’re releasing the community preview of WebXPRT 2015 tomorrow. We’re very excited that it’s finally here. In the past few weeks, we’ve discussed some of the new features in WebXPRT 2015, such as test automation, its new and improved tests, and its Chinese UI. We think you’re really going to enjoy the new WebXPRT.

The design document (login required) specifies that WebXPRT will contain an experimental workload. That workload is not in the community preview, although we plan for it to be in the general release. However, because any experimental workloads are not included in the overall score, this will not affect any results you generate.

We’re also investigating the use of the JavaScript navigator object to improve system disclosure, but we are still determining if we can get reliable enough information to display. So this information is not displayed in the community preview.

As with all the BenchmarkXPRT community previews, we’re not putting any publication restrictions on this preview release. Test at will, and publish your findings. We guarantee the results for the community preview will be comparable to results from the general release.

If you’re not a community member, join us and check out the new WebXPRT.

Eric

A first look

The beta build of WebXPRT 2015 is complete. Although the benchmark is still under development, it looks great!

As we described in the design document, it includes a number of improvements over WebXPRT 2013. There are more, and more demanding, tests. The UI has a cleaner, more modern look, and includes a couple of improvements people have been asking for. There is now descriptive text so that you know what’s happening during the test. Also, a progress indicator in the upper right corner shows you how close the test is to completion. Although the screens aren’t final, here’s a preview of one of the new DNA Sequence Analysis test screens:

WebXPRT DNA

One of the great virtues of WebXPRT is that it runs on almost anything. However, that level of compatibility has limited the range of devices WebXPRT can test. WebXPRT 2015 introduces a set of experimental tests. Running these tests is optional and their results are not included in the Overall Score. We hope that folks will use them to evaluate both new technologies and platform-specific technologies. The first Community Preview will include a WebGL-based 3D experimental test. We expect to add new experimental tests over time and we’re hoping community members will contribute tests or ideas for them.

I’m very excited to see the new WebXPRT. We’re testing now, and I hope to be able to let you know when the Community Preview will be available soon.

Eric

The busiest year ever!

As 2014 winds down, it’s a good time to look back at the year. And what a year it has been! This is the year that the XPRTs really went global. The benchmarks are in wider use than ever. The community continues to grow.

Here are a few of the big things that happened this year:

 

It’s going to be hard to top this year, but we are certainly going to try! There’s another video coming soon. We’re already working on WebXPRT 2015. (If you haven’t commented on the WebXPRT 2015 design document yet, it’s not too late.) We’re making plans for MWC 2015. And there’s a lot more in the works!

Whatever your traditions are, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season. See you in 2015.

Eric

News about MobileXPRT 2013 and WebXPRT 2015

Today, we’re releasing a new build (v92) of MobileXPRT 2013 at MobileXPRT.com and the Google Play store. This build addresses issues encountered when testing MobileXPRT on Android 5 devices. The tests have not changed, so new scores are comparable with previous MobileXPRT 2013 scores.

Click here to download the new MobileXPRT build directly from our site.

Alternatively, you can download the MobileXPRT 2013 APKs directly. The APKs are small (17.9 MB total) and allow you to download the test content during installation. For users who have trouble accessing the Google Play store, these APKs may make it easier to download the benchmark.

Download the MobileXPRT APK here.
Download the MobileXPRT UX Tests APK here.

Also, today we’re publishing the WebXPRT 2015 Design Overview document for community members. You can find the document on the WebXPRT tab in the Members’ Area. We look forward to your feedback!

If you have any questions or concerns about these or any other XPRT-related topics, feel free to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Comment on this post in the forums

The value of diversity

It’s great to hear from community members who are using the XPRTs. Having a pool of users with diverse viewpoints is critical for successful software development. While we try very hard to find problems, there will always be cases we miss.

For example, we talked recently about the challenges of working in a multilingual world. Just this week, Acer reported an interesting bug in the CrXPRT community preview. If your language is set to Chinese, the battery test will estimate the battery life as expected. However, a rundown test will return the message “Cannot calculate total run time.” This does not happen when the language is set to English.

We have verified this problem. In the next week or so, we’ll be releasing a second community preview containing a fix for this and a few other issues.

We’ve talked before about the difficulties of maintaining software in a fast moving world. Late last week, we received a new Nexus 9. It encountered a problem during the MobileXPRT tests, so we fixed the problem and will be releasing a patched build tomorrow.

Don’t forget, as we said last week, we’ll be releasing the WebXPRT 2015 design overview tomorrow. We are looking forward to the feedback from all our community members.

Eric

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