I just stumbled across the Cartoon Tester site. Take a look!
I found “Is that a bug in a software testing site?” particularly pertinent…
I just stumbled across the Cartoon Tester site. Take a look!
I found “Is that a bug in a software testing site?” particularly pertinent…
So, no matter how much you argue that it’s an ancient, irrelevant browser; there’s no way you can wriggle out of having to test your web app against IE6 on WinXP. But… trying to find a machine with it lying around might be difficult. Magnanimous Microsoft have made testing your web app on different IE/Windows combinations less tedious than it could be: combine Virtual PC with a collection of pre-built images and you’re on your way. Here are the details…
First, you’ll need to install Virtual PC:
Next, you’ll need to download as many of the following combinations of Windows/IE as you want from here.
The Windows/IE combinations available are:
Download the images you need, start them, get your testing done before the VM runs out of time (they’re time limited) and then get back to doing something less painful!
Enjoy your multi-IE-version testing. Rather you than me
Something I seem to be explaining to people all the time… the relationships between Watir, Watir “2.0″, Selenium, Selenium “2.0″ and WebDriver.
Alister Scott has done an excellent job of explaining the impact of WebDriver on Selenium and Watir and what it mean for their respective futures. Read it here.
Summary:
===Update===
Added version number to Watir to avoid the confusion seen here.
If you’re designing, writing or maintaining a UI test automation framework, read this before you start:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html
A great quote from the article:
A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing.
I’ve written up similar stuff: Finding the balance between hacky and over-engineered UI test automation frameworks.
There are very few real requirements for a UI test automation framework:
Projects rarely have the time or patience to deal with “we can’t run the tests just now, we’ve got a framework issue”, so frameworks tend to get built alongside the tests; and unless you’re careful, frameworks written under these (quite common) conditions normally die in one of 2 ways:
Like most things, a middle ground needs to be found:
Hacks for hacks’ sake aren’t good. Abstractions for abstraction’s sake aren’t good either. Write what needs to be written, don’t write what doesn’t need to be written, keep things simple, and tidy up after yourself when things get hacky.
It doesn’t happen too often but when it does, it’s hilarious: test data escaping the testing environment. I’ve heard of this happening a few times, but here’s the funiest one so far: