Category: Software Testing
Why record-playback (almost) never works and why almost nobody is using it anyway
June 1, 2016
Alister Scott once again calls out a number of spot-on technical points regarding the use of automation tools. In this case, he discusses record/playback automation tools. Technical reasons aside, we also need to look at the non-technical reasons. I’ve only once encountered someone trying to rely on the record-playback feature of an automation tool (my […]
Testing does not prevent defects
May 24, 2016
There seems to be a bunch of discussion regarding whether testers prevent defects or not. The main source of confusion that I see is confusing ‘testers’ with ‘testing’. Clearing this up seems pretty simple. Testing does not prevent defects. Testers may. I do. But I don’t call that part of my work ‘testing’, even if […]
More haiku updates
August 27, 2015
I’ve added some new ones, need to take one out. At some point, there should probably be a bunch of Scaled Agile haiku. See the agile haiku page.
Jonathan Kohl back down under with testing and user experience training
December 11, 2013
Jonathan Kohl is going to be back in Australia and New Zealand in February with his mobile testing course, as well as with a new course on mobile application user experience. Courses are being run through SoftEd in Auckland, Wellington, Melbourne and Sydney, so check it out!
Free testing book
September 8, 2011
Via Ben Kelly, Rikard Edgren‘s brief but dense ‘Little Black Book On Test Design‘ is worth a read. It’s cheap both in dollars (free) and time (less than 15 minutes if you’re quick).
Test automation styles and alternatives to the Page Object pattern
January 25, 2011
Alister Scott has posted some code examples on watirmelon.com that show different solutions to a problem that arises for people implementing the Page Object pattern for test automation. I found Alister’s approach solutions interesting, because as my automation usually models business/user goals and/or domain features/concepts, I don’t often have my own page abstraction. See http://gojko.net/2009/10/06/putting-selenium-in-the-right-place/ […]
Feedback is nice. Good feedback is even nicer.
July 1, 2010
Today I found out that my post on Watir and TinyMCE let someone dump their Quick Test Pro licences. A victory for common sense… Nothing against QTP, but if you’re testing web applications, you should probably be looking at other tools.
Which testing muppet are you?
May 28, 2010
According to the dev team, this is the muppet representation of me as a tester – But as well as straying into Sam’s stern, righteous, “everything’s wrong” attitude on (rare, I hope,) occasions, I think aspects of my testing persona could just as well be represented by some different muppet outlooks: Animal – The performance […]
Dr Dobbs Interview
May 21, 2010
The topic of interviews came up while chatting with a friend recently, and I noticed that the Dr Dobb’s interview I did a couple of years back is no longer available. I’m reposting it now to have my own copy and to save me from having to dig it out of the Internet Archive in […]
Building regular expressions
May 19, 2010
When my testing gets technical, there are a lot of things that I only have to grapple with infrequently. Regular expressions are one of those in-again, out-again things for which my expertise varies depending on when you ask me. Today’s Ruby hacking saw me find RegExr which helps you build and test regular expressions, as […]