QAWorld

30-second Selenium installation tutorial

John — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:26:49 +0000

For people new to Selenium, here’s a 30-second (32.78 seconds to be precise) tutorial on how to install Selenium on a Linux box running Apache. I’ll assume the DocumentRoot of the Apache installation is /var/www/html.

Download Selenium from openqa.org. The latest release of Selenium as of this writing is 0.6.
Unzip selenium-0.6.zip and cd into the selenium-0.6 directory.
Move or copy the selenium sub-directory somewhere under the DocumentRoot of your Apache server.

That’s it — you have a working Selenium installation!

Source: Agile Testing

Why Thinking ‘Inside the Box’ Is Sometimes Effective for Test Automation

John — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:03:01 +0000

Many automation projects often have boxes of time that are deemed more critical than others. As a byproduct, project members may only give attention to test automation implementation and its returns during those time periods, as opposed to focusing on the returns over the life of the implementation. While there are serious pitfalls to this “timeboxed” view of automation, here are some situations where it may be acceptable and even necessary. Read on.

Speed Test: Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista

John — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:59:34 +0000

Improving performance is one of Microsoft’s design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

The largest difference was 4 points–102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Read on.

Understanding the risks of cloud computing

John — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:38:59 +0000

Web-based tools such as Google Docs and Flickr can be very useful and convenient, but they’re not the safest place for your data

There are two kinds of risks in putting your data online. One is that you can never be quite sure who has access to your information once it has migrated beyond the hard drives and backup storage devices in your home. The other risk is that the information, and sometimes the applications you need to make use of it, may be available only when you are connected to the Internet and the service is up and running. BusinessWeek reports it here.

Best debugging tool for front-end and CSS - Firebug (Firefox extension)

John — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:15:51 +0000

The favorite extension of programmers everywhere, Firebug is one of the best applications around for debugging issues with front-end code and CSS. If there’s any image or style that’s out of line, checking it out with Firebug is the best response. It’s even possible to change styles within the extension to see how a website will actually appear in the browser.

Key Features:

Firebug makes it simple to find HTML elements buried deep in the page. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, Firebug gives you a wealth of information, and lets you edit the HTML live.
Firebug’s CSS tabs tell you everything you need to know about the styles in your web pages, and if you don’t like what it’s telling you, you can make changes and see them take effect instantly.
Firebug includes a powerful JavaScript debugger that lets you pause execution at any time and have look at the state of the world. If your code is a little sluggish, use the JavaScript profiler to measure performance and find bottlenecks fast.
The Document Object Model is a great big hierarchy of objects and functions just waiting to be tickled by JavaScript. Firebug helps you find DOM objects quickly and then edit them on the fly.

Firebug is there when you need it, but doesn’t get in your way when you don’t. There are plenty of options for configuring how and when Firebug springs into action.

Advances in Automated Software Testing Technologies

John — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:42:02 +0000

Here’s a video from the Third Annual Google Test Automation Conference (GTAC). This video outline the latest technologies in automation software.

Using Java to Import and Manipulate Microsoft Excel

John — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:40:43 +0000

JExcel is an API that allows manipulation of Excel spreadsheets from Java applications. JExcel API is a stable open source product that has been around since 2003. The API is very simple to use and yet very powerful.

Key Features

Reads data from Excel 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 workbooks
Reads and writes formulas (Excel 97 and later only)
Generates spreadsheets in Excel 2000 format
Supports font, number and date formatting
Supports shading, bordering, and coloring of cells
Modifies existing worksheets
Is internationalized, enabling processing in almost any locale, country, language, or character encoding (formulas are currently only supported in English, French, Spanish, and German, but more can be added if translated)
Supports copying of charts
Supports insertion and copying of images into spreadsheets
Supports logging with Jakarta Commons Logging, log4j, JDK 1.4

Here’s how to Use the API

7 useful tools for web development testing

John — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:55:13 +0000

Before launching any new website, feature, or upgrade, it has to be tested. The worst nightmare of any programmer, designer, or business is to launch a broken website that drives away users and hurts reputations. It will only create more work, more headaches, and lost profits. Luckily, there are many great tools for web development testing. These 7 tools test everything from CSS validation to website speed.

Internet Explorer 8: A Complete Review

John — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:35:56 +0000

Internet Explorer 8 has shipped in its final version and is ready to take on its rivals. This latest version of Microsoft’s browser leapfrogs its closest competition, Firefox 3, for basic browsing and productivity features — it has better tab handling, a niftier search bar, a more useful address bar, and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services. Here’s the complete review.

10 biggest mistakes developers make with databases

John — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:21:28 +0000

Although fashions come and go in software development, some things stay remarkably constant. One of these is the use of databases. You may be wonderfully up-to-date with an AJAX Web interface or the latest whizbang Windows user interface, but under the covers, you’re probably still pumping data in and out of a database, just as we all did a decade or more ago. That makes it all the more surprising that developers are still making the same database mistakes that date back to those good old days of Windows 95 and before. Perhaps it’s just that most of us learn to use databases on the side, rather than really studying them. In any case, here are the ten biggest mistakes that I see over and over again.