April 2020 Summaries

Sauce Labs Offers Software Testing to COVID-19 Innovators` Sauce Labs is extending its Open Sauce program to offer free and reduced-cost testing for organizations innovating to address COVID-19. The program provides access to thousands of browser, OS, and emulator/simulator combinations, five concurrent sessions for testing in parallel, and unlimited testing minutes. To support the response, Sauce Labs is now offering qualifying organizations real devices for live testing on mobile devices. A company named nSightify has successfully leveraged this offering by adding a telehealth feature to its mobile app, allowing first responders to quickly consult with doctors to determine whether COVID-19 patients need hospitalization or can be treated elsewhere. By automating the testing process, Sauce Labs' Open Sauce program helped reduce nSightify's overall testing time by 50-70%. The program offers several benefits, including instant access to live and automated testing, sharing test results via various channels, and enabling organizations to get up and running quickly with their software testing.

TDD is a programming structure where developers first write all possible test cases and then develop code to pass each test case. The goal of TDD is to create more reliable and maintainable code. Some argue that TDD causes architecture design damage because it forces developers to think about all possible failure scenarios, while others see it as a necessary practice for ensuring software quality. Despite its benefits, some developers find TDD to slow them down and hinder their creativity. However, the effectiveness of TDD is still debated among developers, with opinions ranging from "TDD is dead" to "it's just due for a face lift". Ultimately, whether or not TDD is relevant depends on individual perspectives and experiences.

Sauce Labs offers a comprehensive cross-browser testing platform with over 900 browser versions and support for various operating systems, allowing developers to automate their testing process and eliminate bugs faster. The platform supports multiple programming languages and provides immediate video playback of tests in action, making it easier for teams to collaborate and identify issues. With Sauce Labs, developers can run their tests up to 10 times faster and securely test their sites across different browsers and OS platforms, without the need for manual testing or test infrastructure headaches.

Automating cross-browser testing can simplify the process of ensuring apps render properly on multiple browsers and operating systems, saving time for developers who would otherwise spend hours manually testing. Sauce Labs offers a robust CI-ready platform with over 900 browser versions, including Internet Explorer and Safari, making it easy to test across various Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Android, and iOS platforms. By automating tests, developers can focus on coding, while getting instant results in the language of their choice, eliminating bugs faster and reducing test infrastructure headaches. The platform also securely runs Selenium tests behind firewalls.

Our testing cloud allows you to test on emulators and a long list of Android devices without the need for physical hardware. This helps ensure that your app or site is compatible with various Android versions and devices, making it easier to develop and deploy applications across multiple platforms. With Sauce Labs, you can scale your testing process by using over 800+ OSes, browsers, mobile emulators, and real devices, speeding up your testing by 10x through automated tests. The service also offers a deep selection of Android and iOS devices for testing on various devices without waiting or reservations, providing a convenient and efficient way to test and deploy applications.

Emulator testing is a software-defined environment designed to mimic the hardware and software conditions of an actual mobile device, providing a way to run applications for testing purposes within an environment that is identical in theory to the real-world environment. Emulators save time by not requiring physical devices, making it easy to test on a range of different types of mobile environments. However, emulator environments may not perfectly mirror actual mobile devices and can yield different results from tests run on real devices. Emulator testing is typically most useful early in the software testing process, but should be followed by real-device testing to achieve broad device coverage and confidence that code will run as required in production. Real-device testing provides a second line of defense to plug gaps in emulator testing and should be performed judiciously, focusing on relevant devices and configurations for the target market and user. In some cases, it can make sense to perform real-device testing at the same time as emulator testing, especially when trying to achieve fast release velocity or when emulators fail to mimic certain types of devices or configurations.