November 2020 Summaries

Product managers should be involved in the testing process to deliver high-quality user experiences and reclaim ownership of their product. This involves understanding how testing organizations are broken down and learning about different types of tests, such as unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, accessibility testing, performance testing, and user acceptance testing. By collaborating with the development team and having a good knowledge of testing processes, product managers can ensure that their products are thoroughly tested before release, reducing the risk of re-work and delays. This, in turn, allows them to focus on creating high-quality products and user experiences, ultimately delivering value to their customers.

Cross-browser testing is essential to delivering a flawless user experience to customers, as it ensures compatibility with different browsers, operating systems, devices, and resolutions. Manual cross-browser testing involves performing tests step by step without automated test scripts, allowing human testers to check on application elements that may not be highlighted by automation. While automated testing can shorten release cycles, manual testing is still necessary in various scenarios such as usability testing, security components, and complex functionalities. To get started with manual testing, it's crucial to select the right browsers to test on, considering factors like internal and external sources, browser popularity data, and device coverage. A strategic approach to selecting browsers can optimize testing strategy and maximize market coverage. Conducting manual cross-browser testing involves creating a testing strategy, setting up infrastructure, and executing tests to refine efforts and ensure product quality. By implementing a solid manual testing strategy, developers can reap the benefits of testing and gain a competitive advantage in delivering a seamless user experience.

To perform multi-touch gestures during live testing sessions on the Sauce Labs platform, hold down the ALT key (Windows) or the Option key (OS X), and move your mouse in the direction you wish to move. This behavior mimics that of a physical device. The user can then zoom in by moving the orange dots further away from each other, and zoom out by bringing them closer together. It's recommended to place the mouse at the center of the screen for zooming and outside the center for pinching. A video walkthrough is also available for reference. Live testing on real devices allows users to test multi-touch gestures without needing a physical device, ensuring flawless customer experience.

The benefits of automated testing include running tests 24/7 in the cloud, reusing test scripts on different form factors and devices, providing video playback of not only failing but also passing test runs, scaling to run tests on thousands of combinations of device, operating system, and browser, finding bugs earlier by running regression tests on every build, reducing hidden savings by moving from manual testing cycles to tooling-driven cycles, enabling production monitoring with real-time performance monitoring and alerts, putting applications under load for insights into performance, and achieving a reduced return on investment as the space to cover with tests grows linearly. However, automated testing has its limitations, such as only covering a small subset of user actions, leaving room for minor bugs and customer-irritating issues, and not being able to test effective usability of design. A combination of both automated and manual testing is necessary to achieve the best results.

Sauce Visual is a visual testing solution that can be used to automate the detection of visual changes and as a bonus, get automated functional testing out of it too. To use Sauce Visual with Screener Runner, you'll need the Screener Runner Javascript package and other prerequisites. You can use interactions provided in the Screener Runner package to perform functional testing, similar to Selenium, but with the added benefit of taking visual snapshots to ensure the page looks correct. This allows testers to save time by reducing the number of assertions needed to verify element presence, while focusing on what a user sees. With Sauce Visual and Screener Runner, you can run lightweight E2E testing across multiple browsers and screen resolutions, automating the detection of visual and functional regressions.

Join a live Twitter chat on November 12 at 10:00 PST to discuss keyword-driven testing with Sauce Labs experts Nikolay Advolodkin, Titus Fortner, and Josh Grant. They will share their experiences with the approach, gleaned from years of working with hundreds of testers and automation engineers, and be available to offer advice and answer questions on this topic. The chat is expected to be lively and interactive, with opportunities for participants to ask questions using the hashtag #OnKDT and potentially win some Sauce swag or a grand prize gift card.