Today we switched on our customer API which has been under development for some time. This gives you complete access to your Litmus account programmatically, meaning you can build all kinds of software and tools which utilise Litmus and our testing platform.
What can you do with it? Here are some examples...
- Integrate test results from Litmus into your company's client extranet
- Build an OS X Dashboard widget to let you create new tests without needing to visit the Litmus site
- Build a bookmarklet to instantly test the web page which is currently open in your browser
- Create a Dreamweaver extension which integrates Litmus
- Re-create all functionality from our web application as a native OS X or Windows application
- Automatically post your client's test results to Basecamp
- Build an iPhone interface for accessing your Litmus account
There really are hundreds of possibilities!
To get started using the customer API you can browse the extensive documentation on our help site. That gives you an overview of the customer API, full details of exactly how to use it, and the data you have access to.
It's worth noting that although we're keen to foster development of software that uses our customer API, you're not permitted to resell our testing services via this API. However, you can do that using our various integration options. If you're at all unsure of the licensing details, just email us and we'll be happy to help.
We'll be building a section of our site to showcase software and tools that use our API soon. If you build something, we'd love to hear about it, so please drop us a line.
We're delighted to announce that we've just launched a whole host of new Litmus features. From today, the following additional email clients are available for your testing:
- Lotus Notes 8
- Lotus Notes 7
- Lotus Notes 6.5
- Apple Mail 3
- Apple Mail 2.1
Also available from today are the following new web browsers:
- Safari 3.1 (OS X)
- Safari 2.0 (OS X)
- Camino 1.6 (OS X)
- Camino 1.0 (OS X)
- Konqueror (Linux)
- Firefox 2.0 (Linux)
Support for Lotus Notes and Mac browsers were our most requested features, so we're really happy to release these. They're available right away to all Litmus customers, so if you haven't already joined us, you can sign up here.
Lotus Notes: If you thought Outlook 2007 was fun...
We noted with interest that the folks at 37signals seemed to be running into the same problem as us internally - the question of "what's Paul working on at the moment?", or "what's keeping Matt busy today?". We, too, have a distributed team, working at different locations in the UK and over in New Zealand.
They addressed it with an internal application they dubbed In/Out, and we've just implemented our own variation for Litmus.
We update it throughout our working days with the things we're doing at that time. It helps us to stay familiar with what each other is working on, which can be difficult when the team is so dispersed.
From a technical point of view, it was written by David in Ruby, using the MERB framework. It uses Twitter in the background for people's statuses (via direct messages). We also have a small OS X application which lets us update it quickly. If you're interested in using it yourself, David's going to be making it available as an open source app in the near future. Keep an eye on his blog for more announcements on that front.
Here are the slides for my presentation at Future of Web Design. Thanks to everyone who spoke with me afterwards and emailed. It seems to have gone down well and stimulated some great ideas. It was my first "big" speaking gig and it was a lot of fun.
Thanks to the team at Carsonified (especially Jo) for the super-smooth organisation, and to Paul Boag for the invitation.
Download slides and notes (600kb, PDF)
Update: Download MP3 audio (25 mins, 10mb)
(Photos courtesy of Roan Lavery and Mint Digital)
I will be speaking at the Future of Web Design conference this week. It's now sold out, but if you already have a ticket then I hope to meet you there!
I'll be at the party on Wednesday night, and then speaking at 4:30pm in the main hall on Thursday. If you're coming along, do come and say hello at the conference.