October 2020 Summaries

Sauce Performance is a feature that helps development and QA organizations capture and address performance regressions earlier in the cycle. It allows developers to test the front-end performance of applications in the Sauce platform at no additional cost, starting with machine learning-derived baselines with Google Lighthouse. By following best practices such as separating performance and functional tests, running tests on a single operating system, choosing relevant metrics, optimizing scripts for performance, focusing on core app experiences, and integrating it into your pipeline, users can get the most out of Sauce Performance. With its integration across all Sauce accounts, including free trials, developers can now test their applications' front-end performance at no extra cost.

Sauce Labs is teaming up with IREX, a global development and education organization, to further its mission of creating a more just, prosperous, and inclusive world. The partnership will provide IREX with free access to Sauce Labs' Continuous Testing Cloud platform and expertise, while also utilizing the team's services. This collaboration aligns with Sauce Labs' vision of creating a world of digital confidence, where digital experiences work for everyone. The organization has already contributed to various causes in the past, including Code.org and Rails Girls Kumasi, and is committed to making an impact in underserved communities by providing access to information and technology they need to grow and thrive.

Unscripted - Aled Miles, Niloofar Razi Howe & Kristin LordSauce Labs CEO Aled Miles sits down with Niloofar Razi Howe and Kristin Lord to discuss IREX and their mission of creating a more just, prosperous, and inclusive world.In this new series of video interviews, Aled Miles, President & CEO of Sauce Labs, hosts informal conversations with guests from all walks of life as they talk about leadership, business, and of course, digital confidence.

Regression testing is a crucial step in ensuring that code changes do not introduce new bugs or break existing functionality, allowing developers to verify application behavior and ensure it works as expected before deployment. It can be performed manually or automated, with automated methods being more efficient but also requiring manual review to distinguish between intentional and unintentional changes. Regression testing is an essential part of software development, helping to reduce the number of bugs released and ensuring that new features and bug fixes do not compromise existing functionality.

The article presents a case study on how interactions with only two web elements led to a significant degradation in test execution time, highlighting the importance of optimizing element location timeouts. By keeping the timeout to a maximum of 20 seconds on mobile devices, the inefficiency can be removed, resulting in a substantial cost savings for teams. The solution involves decreasing the amount of time spent waiting for elements to disappear and correcting the logic to wait for elements to appear instead of disappear. This simple yet effective approach can lead to significant improvements in automation efficiency and reliability.

The upcoming release of Selenium 4 has a major version bump due to the implementation of a revised Selenium IDE as a web component, allowing it to be used with multiple browsers, including Chrome and Firefox. The project also fully adopted the W3C WebDriver protocol, replacing its original home-grown wire protocol with improved consistency and API for specifying user actions. This change is expected to provide a stable user-facing API, enabling seamless upgrades from Selenium 3, although some deprecated methods may be removed. The adoption of the W3C protocol is particularly relevant for companies providing Selenium as a service, such as Sauce Labs, who have ensured compliance with the standard. With this release, developers can expect new features and improvements in the upcoming posts in the series.

Sauce Labs is a cloud-based platform that enables developers to run web tests in parallel, making it easier and faster to test their applications. The tool supports various testing frameworks such as Puppeteer, Cypress, TestCafe, and Playwright, allowing developers to choose the framework of their preference. With saucectl, developers can set up, write, and run web tests more efficiently, and also leverage Sauce Labs insights at scale. By running tests in parallel, developers can speed up their native JavaScript tests without additional investments, making it an ideal solution for CI/CD pipelines. The tool is compatible with any Sauce Labs account, and developers can get started for free. To demonstrate the capabilities of saucectl, an example is provided using GitHub Actions to run Cypress tests in parallel, showcasing how to set up and configure the workflow to achieve this.

Parallel testing can significantly reduce overall execution time for a test suite by running multiple tests of equal length simultaneously. To achieve this, it's essential to make tests atomic, meaning each test only tests one thing, autonomous, allowing any test to be run independently, and short, with each test ideally under two minutes in length. Effective data management is also crucial, as different approaches such as "Grab & Hope", static fixture, dynamic fixture, and Just In Time can impact test results. The latter approach ensures autonomous usage of test data by having each test create and authenticate its own user and data, which can increase parallelization but may initially increase test time. By adopting these strategies, teams can improve test speed and accuracy.

The potential for automated UI tests to become slow and unreliable lies in the excessive use of Selenium commands. A case study demonstrates how optimizing a test by addressing inefficient Selenium command usage can significantly improve its speed, reducing execution time from 95 seconds to 17 seconds, a 560% increase in performance. By identifying and eliminating unnecessary web requests and actions, such as validating element states after each click, the refactored test executes only essential commands, resulting in faster and more reliable tests.

The Selenium project is an Open Source initiative run under the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which allows it to focus on writing code and fixing bugs while handling legal and financial aspects. The Project Leadership Committee (PLC) consists of key individuals who provide guidance on funding, sponsorship agreements, and other decisions. The Technical Leadership Committee (TLC) sets the technical direction for the project and includes experts who have demonstrated technical leadership over time. Contributions to Selenium come from a variety of people beyond just the core development team, including patches and community-driven changes. The project encourages involvement through various channels, such as the Slack channel and GitHub page, where individuals can discuss topics, ask questions, and provide feedback.

axe is an open-source accessibility tool that can be integrated with NodeJs Jest and Selenium browser automation tool. axe-core is Deque's open source accessibility rules engine, which powers a number of accessibility tools from Deque. The axe browser extension can catch 50% of accessibility defects, while automated accessibility testing tools fit seamlessly into modern development environments, bringing accessibility testing closer to design. Shifting accessibility left in the SDLC can be done easier and faster with automated accessibility tools, saving development time and resources. Small investments of time and resources in development for accessibility will ultimately save organizations money and ensure less disruption to the SDLC. Using free, open source tools like axe to practice automated accessibility testing early in the SDLC will help shift accessibility left, making the web a more inclusive place for all.