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Must-Have Components of Your Successful Web App Test Strategy

February 18, 2020 By Sarah Mischinger Leave a Comment

In the early days of the WWW era, websites were rather static and simple. Today though, many web applications are quite complicated and more so what people think of as “software.” This complexity comes with a lot of responsibility since you want your app to perform as expected and please your users. This is why proper and thorough testing practices are mandatory for releasing high-quality web apps.

Pave the Way for More Efficient Test Practices During Development

Not thinking about testing during the development process can lead to unnecessary frustrations for your testers. Because testing web applications is no longer optional, you should consider testing requirements right from your project’s start.

Here’s what you can do during development to make testing more efficient:

Leverage Your Past Experiences

Suppose you know that the component you are creating may be faulty in a particular browser if it’s not programmed in a certain way. If you share this knowledge right away and write the functionality accordingly, you can save time and headaches when testing.

Tip: Share your experience with colleagues and make comments in the code if you know about error-prone components.

Use a Solid Foundation

Instead of reinventing the wheel, use frameworks and libraries that are already set up and optimized for your project. For example, Bootstrap for your CSS, Angular, or Vue.js for your JavaScript, Laravel for your PHP backend, etc. With these tools, you can make sure that you are more efficient and end up with fewer errors in your code. Besides, most frameworks already include guidelines for writing code, tests, and so on. As a result, you and your team can save a lot of time in development and testing, as following these rules will help you build a clean and consistent codebase.

Reuse Code Snippets From Other Projects

If you’ve already done something, why not do the exact same thing again? By reusing previously tested code from other projects, you can save time in development and testing. Of course, you still want to write tests for these snippets, but you can expect them to be less of a problem for you.

Clean Code Saves Everyone’s Day

Writing clean code should be a no-brainer since it’s not only easier to test, but also improves your team’s productivity and motivation. If you need to work with someone else’s code, you sure don’t want to spend too much time deciphering what’s going on there. And clean code can help make it more readable and understandable.

The tricky part of achieving clean code is that every single programmer needs to contribute. A great way to improve code quality is to enforce style/code guidelines and let developers install linters in their IDEs that automatically check the written code for spelling mistakes and wrongly styled code.

Be Prepared and Identify Browsers and Devices to Test

While your web app must be all-around highly functioning, it is critical to make sure that it looks and works correctly on the many different browsers and devices, which is called cross-browser testing. After all, the interface of your web app is what users see and interact with. If you present users with a faulty UI, you may be missing out on some new loyal customers.

Before you start cross-browser testing – or any other tests that you must conduct in a browser – you first need to know where to test. For this purpose, you should work with your app’s existing analysis data and determine your users’ preferred browsers and devices. If you don’t have such data, you can find general figures and statistics on the internet.

Based on the results, you then create a matrix with the browsers to be tested, their versions, and various devices such as smartphones and tablets. Also, make sure to make this matrix an integral part of your web app test strategy and update it from time to time, so you don’t miss out on anything new!

Next, evaluate the environments in your matrix and identify the troublemakers, i.e., which are the most demanding to test on and which are more prone to errors? Make sure to test on these first and work your way up to the easier ones. If you do it the other way around, you will likely break previously working code, and then have to test everything again.

Which Test Types Should You Use?

As mentioned earlier, web apps tend to be complex and need to be thoroughly tested before you ship them to your users. Let’s take a quick look at the most essential tests you should include in your web app test strategy to produce a high-quality product your team can release with confidence:

Functionality Testing

Does your web app work as specified? You can make sure of this by performing a variety of tests:

Unit tests in your frontend and backend code. For example: Does a specific input produce the expected output?
Database integrity tests. For example: Do database operations such as updating or deleting rows cause unwanted side-effects?
HTML and CSS checks. For example: Does your code comply with the W3C standard, and are your elements accessible via keyboard?
Frontend functionality tests. For example, do forms and other elements that the user can interact with work as intended? A great tool for this kind of testing is Selenium, which you can learn more about in our webinar here.

Usability Testing

Your team has seen your web app every day for some time now, so it’s wise to get a fresh pair of eyes involved and check your web apps’ usability. You can do this by inviting a small group of external testers that match your app’s target audience and watch them use your application. As a result, you can see what is working well and which areas still need improvement.

Interface Testing

Most web apps get their data from the server via an API. Of course, you need to make sure that both endpoints are individually tested well, but also that the right data is being sent and retrieved. Besides, this is the perfect opportunity to review any error messages from your web application to ensure that they are accurate and understandable.

Compatibility Testing

As discussed earlier, you need to make sure that your app works on different browsers, major browser versions, and your users’ favorite devices. In contrast to functional tests, cross-browser testing mainly focuses on checking whether the user is presented with a consistent experience, regardless of the technology used. Manually performing these types of tests can be tedious. However, testers can save a lot of time by creating and running automated tests with Selenium, a toolbox for browser automation.

Performance Testing

Your users and search engines hate slow websites. Therefore, it is extremely important that you continuously try to improve the speed of your web application. However, other factors can impair the performance, which is why we recommend the following:

JavaScript and CSS: try to minimize your JS/CSS code and serve it in one file if possible. Also, check that you only load code that your app uses!
Assets: Always remember to keep your pictures, videos, etc. as small as possible – compress, compress, compress!
Backend code and database queries: Optimize your API code and database queries to keep waiting times for requests as short as possible.
Stress tests, load tests, and capacity tests: To improve and scale your app in the future, you need to know its metrics: What is the maximum number of users who can use your app at the same time? What does it take to make the system fail? How much data can the server process at the same time?

Be sure to check out LoadNinja to get accurate load tests in just minutes, using real browsers in the cloud.

Security Testing

Not only finance and e-commerce web apps have to be tested for security gaps! Take extra time and let testers look for loopholes and other vulnerabilities. Pay special attention to:

SQL Injection
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Broken Authentication
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Components with well-known vulnerabilities
Encryption of sensitive data
Cookie and Session handling

Conclusion

As you’ve seen, there are many things to consider to ensure your web app is thoroughly tested. We recommend that you create a web app test strategy that helps you keep track of your tasks and makes testing more straightforward for the entire team.

Since testing can be quite time-consuming, you should also look for tools that can help you be more productive. Give our cross-browser test services a shot and see how we can help you deliver high-quality apps to your users more frequently.

Quick Tips To Improve Your Selenium Testing With Python

July 3, 2019 By Andrew Elick Leave a Comment

Selenium can be one of the most powerful tools in a QA Engineer’s arsenal. Unfortunately, it can be time consuming to write and a nightmare to maintain. That’s why I’m here to give you some quick tips to help your testing run as smooth as possible with Selenium and Python.

What Are Some Common Problems?

There can be a wide variety of problems when trying to write automated tests. These can be unique or widespread dependent on what you are trying to achieve. Here are some of the most common ones that most, if not all, developers and QA professionals will cross paths with in their lifetime:

Dynamic Content– Testing a website or a web application that has static content poses a minimal number of challenges in Selenium automation. However, in this day and age, most websites contain content that may vary from one visitor to another. That implies that the content is dynamic in nature (AJAX based apps).
Pop-up Windows– Pop-up windows can be annoying for users. For Selenium testing, they can be major test killers.
Reporting– An important aspect of any test automation environment is getting a detailed and easily understandable report for each test execution. When you use Selenium WebDriver, there are several possibilities to achieve a reporting mechanism. All of which, however, must be implemented in code using third-party integrations.

Dynamic Content

A better approach to handle this challenge with Selenium WebDriver dynamic content would be to use Implicit Wait or Explicit Wait.

Explicit Waits

An explicit wait is a code you define to wait for a certain condition to occur before proceeding further in the code. The extreme use case of this is time.sleep(), which sets the condition to an exact time period to wait. There are some convenience methods provided that help you write code that will wait only if required. WebDriverWait in combination with ExpectedCondition is one way that this can be accomplished.

Some of the common Expected Conditions are below:

title_contains
presence_of_element_located
visibility_of
invisibility_of_element_located
presence_of_all_elements_located
element_located_selection_state_to_be
alert_is_present
element_located_to_be_selected

Implicit Waits

An implicit wait tells WebDriver to poll the DOM for a certain amount of time when trying to find any element (or elements) not immediately available.

Handling Pop-up Windows

Humans can handle pop-up windows easily by identifing them and then reacting with them as needed. The task itself is very easy for us; but for our automated tests, it can been a real nuisance. Luckily Selenium has built in support for handling browser pop-ups.

`alert = driver.switch_to_alert()`

switch_to_alert() allows you to change the focus to the newly opened browser window. You can then interact with it as you see fit, fill out information, accept a term, or close the window.

Reporting

Typically, the main reason for creating these automated tests would be to gather reports about your product, locate bugs, and improve the overall performance. But Selenium does not have a detailed reporting tool included! Luckily for us, Python can provide us with a variety of testing modules that can be used in tandem with Selenium.

unittest – A built-in module that is included with every package of Python. Read about unittest
Pytest – A more powerful module for those looking for more options and abilities. Read about Pytest

There are many other testing modules/frameworks that you could use to validate your tests, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Here is a full list of Python testing tools that you may want to look through if the above options don’t satisfy your needs.

While Selenium testing can be difficult at times and present challenges that you may have never thought of, I hope the tips above will help make it a little easier. The possibilities with Selenium are nearly endless and the better you become, the more extensive your tests can become!

Looking to get started with Selenium and Python? Check out our help documentation!

12 Reasons to Pursue a Software Testing Career

June 22, 2017 By Alex McPeak Leave a Comment

Software testing gets a bad rap. But, people that don’t think a software testing career is rewarding, challenging, and fun surely aren’t software testers. In fact, most testers really love their jobs, and wouldn’t give it up for any job in the world.

When considering which direction to take your career next, here are a few reasons you should think about pursuing a software testing career.

It’s challenging – Testing is not easy — there are constantly puzzles and problems to solve. The job will likely bring something new every day. If you prefer a boring job where you don’t have to think too much then don’t pursue a software testing career. But if you want a job that keeps you on your toes, anyone will tell you that testing is a really great choice.
It’s important – Testers don’t always get enough recognition for the work they do, but we’d be lost without them. As a tester, you’re advocating the end user and making sure that they’re being delivered a quality product. Without someone to find bugs before software is delivered, many businesses would be suffering from poor reputations and unloyal customer bases.
It’s creative – You have to get a little innovative when testing. The process isn’t going to be spelled out for you — in fact, it takes a little detective work. By acting as the end-user, you’re the one who has to get creative when thinking of places there may be inconsistencies.
It’s data-driven – One of the coolest things about a software testing career is that it’s just as technical as it is creative. While most testers need to have a foundation of developing and coding as a baseline, they’re also analyzing day-to-day data and product trends. Having a knowledge of computer sciences is imperative, as you have to be someone that knows the ins and outs of software and the way it works.
You’re constantly learning – Whether you’re starting to code, automate, or security test, there’s always more to learn in a software testing career, and you likely have a very supportive team behind you to make sure you have all the resources you need to be the best. Plus, your work will never be stagnant, as you’ll be continuously growing and improving your practice.
You get to test the limit – You can’t go around smashing people’s laptops, but you do get to explore software to see where it stops working. Of course, testers don’t actually break software, but it can be really fun to find a bug no one thought existed in software everyone thought was working perfectly. It takes especially critical eyes to find these kinds of problems and solve them.
It’s in demand – If you want a high growth, high paying career, QA is the way to go. As a software tester, you’ll always be needed and will find no lack of leading companies trying their hardest to recruit you, and there are constantly opportunities to grow in your career to reach a managerial level.
There are many paths – Every company that uses software needs software testers, which is to say, pretty much everyone needs software testers. Testers are valuable in basically any industry, from healthcare to retail to video games. Additionally, you can choose whether you want to go into manual testing, automated testing, performance testing, etc.
It’s a specialized skill – Despite misconception, not anyone can test. Most testers start in a similar field and find themselves being drawn to the role, but it requires in-depth knowledge of UI/UX design and development patterns and practices, as well as analytical and communication skills. Not everyone will find that they have what it takes to be a tester, but those who find it’s their calling are sure to fall in love with it.
It’s rewarding – You’re essentially helping your company build a better product. If you take pride in your work and these people you work for, then testing is an exceptional way to make a measurable difference in your organization’s goals, objectives, and bottom lines. In fact, you’ll probably see your impact every day on the job.
You’ll love your colleagues – As the software industry increasingly trends toward concepts like Agile development, Continuous Integration, DevOps, and automation, communication becomes a highly important skill for software testers. This means that throughout the day you’ll always be collaborating with smart, interesting, and passionate people who share the same interests as you at every level in the organization.
There’s a strong community – Additionally, one of the best things about being a tester is the insanely supportive and robust community. From StackOverflow to Twitter, testers are a tightly knit group who have each other’s backs and always enjoy discussing best practices and trending topics in the industry.

Why did you become a software tester? What’s your favorite thing about your job? Share with us in the comments!