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Toni's Looking for automated testing

(Argh! after writing a nice little opus, Blogger crapped out on me and I lost it)

At any rate, it looks like Toni is looking for automated testing tools.

Yes, I wrote an article about the VFP Test Harness and FoxRunner but both of these tools (as Toni and I have discussed ) have a steep learning curve (kind of like having to learn a scripting language to install an application).

Now I've tried Vermont Creative's High Test Plus which worked well EXCEPT that it didn't handle testing different directories or screen resolutions very well. Heck - I even used Microsoft Test, a tool so unknown that you can't even find a good Google page for it except for all the people who used to have to use it.

While I was looking in the archives, whatever happened to AutoManual? Roger Woodsmall's tool was more for documentation but hey! it did test every little piece of your application and took a screen shot of it to boot.

While yes, I suppose one could argue that if you did proper unit testing, you wouldn't have much need for automated testing but that's a bit far fetched because the problems never occur when you do things one at a time, it's when everything is put together!

And even then, everyone finds another way of doing it. Can you right-click or left click or what happens when you do something and the moon is full?

I almost wish TechSmith would do something like Morae for automated testing - because they get the screen capture aspect of it down so well with Morae.

One thing I really liked about FoxRunner was the number of features (it did do scripting with a VFP-like language and it did do some good work with test data ) but the UI was really tough to get used to.

Hey - is there a new version for this tool yet with an improved UI? That might be the answer. Otherwise you'll have to do as I suggested in my FoxAdvisor article, and write your timer code that just goes around hitting every button on every form, and the like.

Any ideas - be sure to let Toni know and let everyone else in on the secret.

F1 Technologies Blog: Automated Testing?

Comments

Toni M. Feltman said…
Thanks Andrew! The one thing that unit testing doesn't really get to is UI testing. I guess you could call a UI unit test an automated test. If that is the case, there are no real good UI testers. Unit testing gets you over a hurdle but it doesn't test the UI wierd combinations like you said.
January 12, 2006 at 6:02 PM
Anonymous said…
Hi Toni, hi Andrew,

please have a look at FoxRunner page. We have reworked the user interface completely with FR3, wrapped some hard-to-do tasks by a scripting toolbar, introduced test functions and a master script feature and created a testmanager tool above it all. Script language is VFP as before, enhanced by some special flow control keywords.

Best of all - we have rewritten the tutorial completely. You may download the new version including the new manual and tutorial at http://www.cal.de as before.

Thanks and best regards
Manfred Rätzmann
January 13, 2006 at 5:29 AM
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