Issue 250

COMMENT

Welcome to the 250th issue!

Today, I want to share with you a great discussion on iOS Testing Strategies.

What makes it special? It only includes responses from developers of companies such as Airbnb, Spotify, Uber, and others.

Some interesting trends:

High reliance on unit tests. A lot of them.
For UI testing, smaller test suites are fine with default test frameworks, while bigger suites often require custom tooling.
Manual testing plays an important role in most cases.

And there's much more. Even though it's from 2021, I still think it's relevant.

Happy testing! 🙂

PS. I also recommend checking out the collection of resources on How They Test on Mobile by Alexey Alter-Pesotskiy.

NEWS

AI and the New Testing Triad

How does AI-assisted testing fit within other ways of testing? Jason Arbon outlines its value in complementing manual and automated testing for more efficient and comprehensive test coverage.

In relation to that, Christian Nissen outlines The Efficiency and Deficiency of Automated Tests.

Invaluable Testers Create Their Own Test Ideas

Wayne Roseberry gives some good, practical advice on how testers should approach thinking about testing.

Furthermore, Elena Voevodkina wrote about Testing in the Dark: Strategies for No-Documentation Projects.

Testing with a Bug in My Head (Not the Software Kind)

"Are you sure you've checked everything?" — Ekaterina Noga shares the pros and cons of having such an inner voice as a tester.

Moreover, Patrick Prill has some interesting thoughts about When a tester gets the zoomies and the importance of different Perspectives in Testing.

Three Metrics That Actually Matter When You're Testing Solo

Testers may need to take different approaches in different environments. As Katja Obring explains, this also applies to quality metrics.

It's related to Katja's experience From Drowning in Data to Driving Decisions: A Solo Tester’s Journey.

AUTOMATION

Enhancing Web UI Test Automation with Machine Learning

If you're interested in solving test automation challenges with machine learning (and we're not talking about gen-AI, but pure ML), then you'll enjoy this wonderful deep dive by Sam Treweek.

One Technique for Fixing/Preventing Flaky Tests

"(...) «increasing delays between actions» and «adding the await keyword where needed» are among the popular solutions for fixing flakiness."

Andrey Enin shows an interesting example of addressing this concern in automated web UI tests.

Furthermore, Michał Rudzki shows a simple example to warn against Using random or favourite numbers — Laziness in tests that can cost you dearly.

Screenshot testing in Jetpack Compose

Android now provides an officially supported way of performing visual testing using Compose Screenshot Testing. Oliver Vicente shows an example of leveraging that.

Ten reasons why you should lint your test automation code

This is concise but valid advice from Mike Harris on how linting can impact the maintenance and quality of your tests.

What Does Test Coverage Mean?

Is it code coverage, automation coverage, or feature coverage? It can be confusing, but Kristin Jackvony explains it well.

Also, Gil Zilberfeld shares some thoughts on why Code Coverage Sucks!.

TOOLS

API Testing with Playwright and OpenAPI-Generated Types

Playwright can test both the UI and API of web apps. Adam Pajda wrote a detailed, example-based overview of implementing tests for the latter.

How to do authentication in Playwright

If your web app requires authentication, there's a smart way of handling that across several Playwright tests without repeating the login scenario all over again. Filip Hric explains how.

Similarly, Butch Mayhew has an example of Playwright Login Test With 2FA Enabled.

Simplifying XCUITests with the Singleton Pattern: Introducing TestContext

Fran Roig shows how using an abstraction layer on top of XCUITest can simplify and improve iOS tests.

Taking Screenshots with Selenium WebDriver BiDi in Java

Lana Begunova demonstrates how to handle different types of taking screenshots in Selenium tests using the built-in BrowsingContext features.

BOOKS

Book Review: Team Guide to Software Testability

In yet another insightful book review, Nicola Lindgren shares her opinion about "Team Guide to Software Testability", recommending it to everyone in software development.

VIDEOS

Turn Playwright into AI-Powered Test Automation with Claude MCP Server

In this 13-minute video, Karthik K.K explains how to leverage the Model Context Protocol to connect Claude AI to the local Playwright environment and write tests with it.

Furthermore, he also used it to implement No-Code API Testing with Playwright + AI.

AND...

Fix or... retry? 😂

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Issue 250 December 18th 2024