Test automation around emails is pain, if not done properly.

Almost all the user facing web applications require user registration with the email and email usually serves as username in the system – which should be unique.

There are two main problems in automating email functionality –

• Generating unique email addresses
• Accessing inbox and content of the specific emails to check correctness of content and delivery

When I discussed this with evil tester, he pointed me to his blog post on getting disposable email addresses . When I followed the link to lifehacker ,from his blog post, first problem was solved.

It was easy enough to generate a random number such as current time stamp and amend it to any gmail address after adding a plus sign to create new email addresses which will go to the same inbox. So example @ gmail.com, example+123 @ gmail.com and example+321 @ gmail.com are ...

If you are involved in doing any kind of test automation for web application, I am sure you are either using, or have considered Selenium for your test automation efforts. Well, if you have not considered, then maybe it’s time to give it a shot…

For folks who are familiar with or are using Selenium / WebDriver in any form, I hope you are aware that Selenium conference is happening from 16’Th to 18’Th April in London.

Last year, I travelled all the way to San Francisco from London to attend the conference and presented Magic of Modular Test Automation and this year I am presenting One Step At A Time (Will publish slides after the conference). BTW, I also wrote laziest experience report of Selenium Conference 2011 to share my experience … and to summarize my last year's experience in one word - Selenium Conf 2011 was AWESOME ...

This post is a combination of two things - an advise and a request. In case you are wondering, it is not complicated advise and simple request, it's a simple advise and challenging request. If you like challenges of testing web applications, you may like this challenge as well.

So let's talk about the advise first. Find defects to find defects quicker - I am sure most of us already know this, isn't it? But sometime we do need to state and explain obvious. We do it all the time in testing - we state and explain obvious defects isn't it? Well, we need to that because obvious is obviously not obvious for everyone :-)

Software testing is a skilled profession and like all the skilled professions, you get better at it with practice. However, there is a difference between doing day-to-day testing in job for many years and practicing ...

Web applications are everywhere and most of us test them to earn our bread and butter. Broadly speaking, there are two types of web applications or websites - One which provide service and another which provide content. Web applications such as emails, facebook, bank or blogging platform provide a specific service and BBC, Times and many such sites provide content.

Irrespective of the type of web application, all of them need to understand user behaviour on the site and gather key usage pattern. One common way of doing this is with the help of analytic code. As a tester, it is important for us to understand how it works and how it can be tested. In this entry, I will discuss this in more detail and show you how iCheckWebsite can be used to test analytic code.

So what is Analytic code? Analytic code is usually a java script snippet which ...

Rick Mugridge, Author of the famous book "Fit for Developing Software" explains the concept of story driven development, executable specifications and FitNesse. In this presentation, he addresses four main issues involved with software development and how FitNesse can be used to address following issues

1. How can we improve test coverage on a legacy system without discouraging its evolutio
2. How can QA be involved earlier and more effectively?
3. How can product managers better utilise their expertise?

Testing Mobile Handsets with FitNesse - Uffe Koch & Mark Boxall

In this lecture process and problems associated with developing mobile applications is discussed. Specifically, what kind of problems are associated with testing mobile applications, what type of test cases you need to write for mobile applications and how FitNesse can be used for mobile applications testing.

Testing web application is always fun and if you are automating your web application testing with Selenium, its even more fun. Unfortunately, like any other tool selenium has few limitations. One of the most annoying limitation of selenium is its inability to handle browser windows (Or any other expected or unexpected windows). When we automate any application which launches these windows (For example security warning windows, certifications windows and so on), we get stuck by the inability of selenium to handle them. I have seen people executing those automated tests but clicking on OK/Yes/Continue manually whenever these windows appear. This defies the whole purpose of automation, because tests can not be executed without human intervention.

Though it is not possible to solve this problem using Selenium (As far as I know), but we can certainly combine Selenium with other tools to solve it. One option is to use ...

Most of the organizations these days understand the importance of unit testing and use it heavily in their project. Unit testing frameworks are available for most of the high-level languages like JUnit for Java, NUnit for .NET, pyunit for Python and so on. These unit testing tools have now reached a level of maturity and most of us have probably used them in some capacity. Unit testing Java Script is unfortunately, still a bit tricky and its integration with other tools is also not well known. In this article, I will try to explore how QUnit framework for testing Java Script can be integrated with Selenium and continuous Integration.

QUnit is a unit testing framework for JavaScript. It is capable of testing the JQuery code and server side code as well. QUnit tests require loading of the javascripts in the browser so even though they are unit tests their integration ...

I am a big fan of patterns and feel that ability to identify pattern is extremely useful for us testers. Patterns can be used in manual testing and automation both. In the following presentation, I will try to explain what are patterns, why patterns should be used in software testing and a nice tool we build utilizing the power of patterns.

Most of the patterns will have two main characteristics – they are repeatable and predictable. This repeatability and predictability is not limited to just development (as in design patterns), but can be used equally well in software testing. You can find a patterns in how testing is perceived by a specific manager and brace yourself to work (or argue) in a certain manner. You can find pattern in your own observation and figure out what sort of things you miss mostly. Probably there is a pattern in most of the ...