Web testing the way your customers want it

Do you know how much importance your customers attach to the web testing you do for applications? None at all. What your customers are really interested in are things like the information they can obtain by using your application, the communication it allows them, what they can shop for, or the fun video or photo content it offers. This is the tragedy of web testing. When its done well, customers just move on to other things. If web testing misses bugs or defects however, you can bet that youll hear all about it. But hey, stop wearing that smile upside-down! Good web test automation can boost web testing speed and quality, and make your life livable again (well work on your fame and fortune later).

Web testing is becoming an ever greater percentage of the testing required for applications and systems, so get to know how good automation software can help.

The GUI is Automatically the Way to Go

When youre at the stage of web testing from a customer perspective, youre past unit and integration testing. Now its time for functional and load testing of all the components needed to make your application run. The customer web perspective in most cases also means that a user interface or GUI will be the point of entry for tests. Good test automation software therefore needs to offer testers quick, easy ways to run tests automatically through such a graphical user interface. A smart macro recorder and inbuilt intelligence in the automation software for handling web objects will make your testers life easier too.

Forms, Files, Scripts, and Media

According to what your application is designed to do, customers will be filling in forms, uploading or downloading files, using scripts that may or may not work with their browsers, displaying media on screen or all of the above. Your automated web testing via browser GUIs will need to reproduce customer input anomalies like unexpected control characters when they fat-finger a response. It will need to cross-check that at least acceptable levels of functionality exist for all major browser versions; and check that file transfers and image displays are correctly executed. The best test automation software also has image recognition built-in to help to automatically ensure web pages are displaying correctly.

Load, Stress, and Security Tests

One user with one GUI can upload or download one file, or initiate one database search, or one online simulation. How about 1,000 users? Or 100,000 users? Web testing to ensure projected user loads can be handled are critically important, too. The right automated test software can give you the possibility to accurately simulate such loads from a single source or from many individual sources. In each case, you can increase loads tested automatically until you find the point at which your application no longer responds suitably, and log results to then identify any particular bottlenecks. You can also automate simulated hacker attacks and denial of service attacks to test your app, the environment in which it runs, and the network to which it connects.

What Does Your App Do When It Breaks?

Applications that just break are guaranteed to enrage customers. Suppose faulty data is entered, loads become too big, or non-mainstream browsers are used. Then the application needs to go down some pre-defined route to maintain a level of performance or functionality that remains acceptable to customers under the circumstances. Tests for acceptability can also be automated in web testing. Whats more, they can be stored and re-used as the basis for regression testing when a new version of your application arrives.

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