Gojko Adzic

Here are the links and slides from my talk today at Skills Matter on testing web applications with Selenium.

Download Powerpoint slides from here.

• Selenium-core: selenium-core.openqa.org/
• Selenium-Remote Control: selenium-rc.openqa.org/
• Selenium-IDE: selenium-ide.openqa.org/
• Selenium-Grid: selenium-grid.openqa.org/
• Domain-specific testing languages presentation from Agile 2008 by Mickey Phoenix from Solutions IQ: www.solutionsiq.com/agile2008/agile-2008-domain.php
• StoryTestIQ: storytestiq.solutionsiq.com
• Cubic Test: www.cubictest.com
• WebTest Fixtures: fitnesse.info/webtest

Ivan Sanchez will put his slides online at www.isanchez.net.

I’m doing a talk on testing web applications with Selenium next Thursday
at Skills Matter offices in London with Ivan Sanchez and Milan
Bogdanovic. We’ll cover the basics of Selenium, best practices and
pitfalls, using selenium IDE and remote control. The event is free, but
up-front registration is required so that we can plan for capacity. For
more information and to register, click here.

User interface tests are a bit tricky – it is easy to get carried away and waste quite a lot of time, without getting any real benefits. However, if planned properly, automated UI tests can have a great effect on the project. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of automated user-interface tests. Continue Reading »

Web user interfaces have traditionally been hard to integrate into an automated test process. Selenium+FitNesse combination, with just a bit of coding, solves this task incredibly well.

Selenium is a free browser automation and testing library, written by folks at ThoughtWorks. It can simulate text input, mouse events and execute various tests on page content. It’s written in JavaScript, and is compatible with all major browsers and platforms.

FitNesse is an open-source test and collaboration server, based on the Framework for integrated tests (FIT), and supports testing Java, .Net, Python and even some other code. I think that it is a good choice for the second side of the web UI testing coin, because it enables tests to be written almost like in English language. As the UI is very close to clients’ eyes, tests can and should be written so that clients can verify them (and if you are really lucky, even help with writing and maintaining the tests). Continue Reading »

A friend of mine has a problem – his team worked for months on a big system with great success, marvellous technical achievements and a very elegant architecture. However, the users don’t share his enthusiasm. They don’t appreciate the architecture, flexibility and openness to change. Somehow, they seem ‘blinded by the user interface‘. Although the statement is completely correct, it’s hardly something that developers should be moaning about – on the end, ‘user interface‘ is called like that because it is exactly what users see. Instead of complaining how users only see ‘the stupid UI‘, we can embrace that fact and improve their feelings about our software.

Developers tend to over-emphasise functional aspects, underlying structure and technical achievements. But users are blind to that – they only see what the software does, not how. Most users are only concerned about how the software will help them get their regular job done, and how pleasant it will be to work with. For them, the underlying structure, service layers and database optimisations exist somewhere over the rainbow… Continue Reading »