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Continuous Web Automation Testing

30
Oct

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It’s not a secret that continuous automation testing helps software development businesses stay competitive. As of today, 87% of managers in software development support test automation initiatives. What’s more, 45% plan to increase spending on test automation.

Knowing how mainstream continuous automation testing has become, how do you successfully implement it? Reaching this goal takes several steps. We’ll cover each of these steps below, but first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page as far as basics go. Also, let’s briefly explore the benefits and pitfalls of continuous web testing, as well as the popular tools.

Selenium locators best practices

27
Sep

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The skill of building robust Selenium locators is both science and art. This skill stems from a special kind of intuition that you can only attain while working on real-life projects. Most QAs agree it takes months, sometimes years, to develop this intuition.

Selenium IDE for Chrome

26
Sep

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What is Selenium IDE?

Ever noticed how some companies literally call their products Selenium IDE in Chrome? Katalon and Kantu are two examples, but I’m sure you’ve seen more. If you are new to UI testing automation and this seems confusing, Selenium IDE has nothing to do with these.

Rather, Selenium IDE is a standalone Firefox extension for record-playback testing of web UIs. This tool allows testers to record interactions with a UI and automatically rerun them during regression testing.

What is end-to-end testing?

25
Sep

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What is end-to-end testing?

End-to-end testing (e2e testing) is a software quality assurance methodology that ensures correct functioning and performance of applications in production-like scenarios. This methodology checks if an application performs as designed on all levels and across all subsystems. The scope of end-to-end testing encompasses the application in its entirety, as well as its integration with external interfaces and outside applications.

Combining Selenium tests with drag and drop on interactive maps

20
Sep

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The only way to solve 90% of large complex problems is by breaking them down into small manageable subproblems. You’ve probably heard about eating the elephant one piece at a time, or starting the long trip with one small step…

What these adages describe is an approach that helped us solve a lifelong problem of UI testing with Selenium. That problem is drag-and-drop actions against embedded interactive elements like Google Maps. Not only we figured out how to fully automate this functionality, but we also implemented it within an embedded browser! Here’s how we did it.

Top-5 Selenium alternatives in 2018

12
Sep

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Whenever someone talks about Selenium alternatives, a frequent question is whether these alternatives exist at all. Ask any tester to recommend one such alternative, and with a 99% probability, they’ll name a tool based on Selenium WebDriver. Besides, how many companies using real Selenium WebDriver alternatives can you name?

Nevertheless, there’s a whole bunch of higher-level WebDriver-based tools that do the job better than Selenium. Available as frameworks, desktop applications, and web platforms, these Selenium competitors address various issues of coding straight to the WebDriver API. And let’s face it, there are quite a few issues. In my experience, the following 5 pain points are near deal-breakers for automation with Selenium.

Image and screenshot comparison tools for UI testing

12
Sep

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There is a simple case for why end-to-end UI testing is impossible without automated image comparison. Absence of a screenshot comparison tool puts your product at risk of shipping with visual bugs which rarely go unnoticed by users. No sane QA engineer is willing to accept that risk.

So do you automate image comparison when testing UIs? And if yes, what automation tool do you use? Is it a simple module for WebDriver (or other code-based solution) or a dedicated visual CSS regression testing tool?

Let’s look at the popular tools and platforms that QAs leverage to compare screenshots when testing web UIs.

ROI in Software Testing and Automation

31
Aug

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There’s an annoying misconception about the test automation ROI that’s been haunting the QA industry. The misconception is that by its very nature, software testing doesn’t have any ROI. Quite literally, some folks (including people from SmartBear) argue that the concept of ROI doesn’t really apply to software QA.

If, for some odd reason, you believe this too, allow me to opine as to why you’re wrong:)

Manual testing tools in 2018

07
Aug

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What manual testing tools is your team using in 2018? Amid the talks of AI-driven tools and the automation of everything, most of software testing is manual in 42% of companies. If near-100% automation is the goal, we’re still a long way from reaching it. This means the industry still needs manual testers and manual testers still need good software testing tools.

Luckily, there are dozens of solutions out there to aid QAs. So if you want to streamline manual testing, this post will explore the best options for test management, bug management, and low-code test automation.

Software testing at Facebook and Google in 2018

26
Jun

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If you’re researching best practices for software testing, Google and Facebook are among the biggest trendsetters in QA. So how are the giants ensuring software quality in 2018?

Let’s see if the Google Testing Blog and Facebook Engineering Blog can help us answer this question. This post will piece together the bits of first-hand info from these two resources, as well as comments from Googlers and Facebookers. Without further ado, read on for a high-level overview of how Google tests software in 2018 or jump to the section covering Facebook.