Weekly Newsletter: How do you review test automation code?
TESTING AND THE COMMUNITY
[Hands-on Session] Collaborating with Developers: How-to Guide for QA Pros
At the end of this session, I guarantee that you will gain a deeper understanding of different kinds of tests, know how to decipher developer terminology, and learn how to write unit, integration, browser, and E2E tests.” — Gil Tayar. Happening on January 30 at 6 pm GMT.
Coding For Non-Coders by Jim Holmes
You don’t need to have software development skills in order to be a valuable member of a software delivery team. That said, getting a basic level of comfort and proficiency with writing and reading code can open up incredible new opportunities for you! This course will help you will all of this.
Masterclass — From Testing Hell to Testing Well on Tuesday 22nd Jan with Rob Meaney
How do high performing teams achieve the seemingly impossible task of delivering valuable software with increasing speed and frequency without compromising quality? In this masterclass, Rob will recount his testability journey and the lessons he has learned. He will present the models, exercises and workshops he used extensively as a test coach to build a whole team focus on testability.
Testing Ask Me Anything — Testability with Ash Winter
We have a new Ask Me Anything live webinar on Tuesday 12th February at 8 pm UK time. Once you’ve registered you could ask Ash any question you might have around Testability, for example, How do I know when something is hard or easy to test? Is testability all about systems or are there social and team dynamics at play?
10 Amazing Reasons to Attend TestBash Brighton by Rosie
There’s no doubt that the world of conferences, software testing and TestBash has changed in the past few years. In the case of TestBash(es) we’ve evolved and grown in many different ways, I thought it would be helpful to point out some key points and ideas we are working on.
How do you review test automation code? by Natasha
Recently, I have started to help with implementing the test automation suite for our nightly and on-pull request builds. My Question — How do you review test cases to ensure they’re acceptable for the test suite?
How would you describe your approach to the relationship between risks, questions, exploration and sharing? by Simon Tomes
In the early days of my testing career I’d jump straight into scenarios — “I need to test this and test that”. I noticed a profound difference in my approach to testing once I tried my best to capture risks first. My senses open to more opportunities and typically discovering more useful things.
Testing Ask Me Anything — Robots in Automation with Jason Huggins
This incredibly fascinating webinar is now available for rewatching. We got an insight into robots Jason has built and is still working on. Demonstrating how they can be integrated with automation, all to help testers make better use of their time.
Options not Obligations by Maverick Tester
We want to provide our consumers and business partners options as opposed to obliging them by providing only one option. By “Designing in options” for your business partners and consumers, you provide them with the ability to take the greater risk while minimising the impact of failure for them.
If tradition trumps the common sense by Antti Niittyviita
It’s uncanny how easily tradition trumps common sense. Just recently I had a chat with a friend. He told about how he had started in the telecoms industry. He worked in a factory making infrastructure devices.
Node.js & JavaScript Testing Best Practices by Yoni Goldberg
As an independent Node.js consultant I’m engaged and review 10+ projects every year and my customers justifiably ask to focus on testing. A few months ago, I started to document here the insights and repeating errors I observe at the field and suddenly it piled-up into 30 testing best practices.
BUSINESS BLOG POSTS
5 Situations When You should not Consider Test Automation by Ankit Dwivedi
The overwhelming adoption of DevOps practices and the proliferation of agile as a standard development methodology has crunched software development cycles and dramatically accelerated releases. This has made testing and testing fast a necessity.
Do You Test Like A User? Why Not? by Renée Elizabeth Mineart
As techies, we have an innate understanding of how computers and applications work. Why? Because software is like the town we grew up in, we understand it. We get it. We don’t get lost. However, users, like strangers to our town, often do get lost.
What is ETL Testing? A Beginners Guide to ETL Testing by Jithin Nair
The letters ETL stand for Extract, Transform, Load, which describes an integration that combines these three database functions into one process. It is used for extracting data from various sources, converting the raw data to fit into a conventional data schema before exporting and storing it in a data warehouse which can be accessed for various business intelligence needs.
PODCASTS
62: Python Training — Reuven Lerner by Test & Code
There are a lot of learning styles and a lot of ways to learn Python. If you started Python through a class at work, or through an online course, or maybe an email series, it’s possible you may have learned from Reuven Lerner.
236: Sleeping Is Not Your Best Friend in Automation with Michelle Macdonald by Joe Colantonio
Have you ever watched SpongeBob SquarePants? If so, this episode is for you as we Test Talk with Michelle Macdonald about the SpongeBob-themed talk she gave at last year’s SeleniumConf titled “Sleeping is not your best friend in automation.” Discover why “sleeping” is not optimal, and learn better ways of using waits in Selenium. Are you ready? If so, listen up!
Episode 406 — There Is A Human Element To A Security Profession, Don’t Forget That by Security in Five
In IT and security we get wrapped around the technical and process aspects that causes a fog to blind us from what the data represents. We try to protect and defend but what are we protecting? This episode talks about the human element behind the security profession and brings some context to the true defence goals.
Ep 8: Is Software Testing More About Testing Or Programming by Testing Podcast
As the testing world evolves, the lines between tester and developers are starting to fade. Testers now need to have some programming abilities as well.
Episode 96: Principle #8??? by AB Testing
Happy New Year everyone — amongst catching up, we spend most of the time discussing and debating a potential eighth Modern Testing Principle.
111: When rivals hack, and “extreme” baby monitors by Smashing Security
Why a business spat resulted in Liberia falling off the internet, how the US Government shutdown is impacting website security, and the perplexing world of extreme IoT devices.
UPCOMING MOT EVENTS
- Masterclass — From Testing Hell to Testing Well — Adopting Whole Team Approach to Testability — 22nd January at 8pm UK time
- Testing Ask Me Anything — Testability — 12th Feb at 8pm UK Time
- TestBash Essentials Brighton — 1 day — Wednesday 3rd April 2019 — Early Bird Tickets on Sale!
- TestBash Brighton — 1 day — Friday 5th April 2019 — Early Bird Tickets on Sale!
- TestBash Netherlands — 2 days — Thursday 23rd — Friday 24th May 2019 — Super Early Bird Tickets on Sale!
- London Tester Gathering Workshops — 3 days — Wednesday 26th — Friday 28th June — Sign up to the launch list
- TestBash Germany — 2 days — Thursday 12th — Friday 12th September — Submit your talk now!
- TestBash Manchester — 2 days — Wednesday 2nd — Thursday 3rd October — Submit your talk!
- Test.bash(); — 1 day — Friday 4th October — Submit your talk!
- TestBash Australia — 2 days — Thursday 24th — Friday 25th October — Submit your talk!
AUTOMATION
Testing, Integration, and Contracts — Part 1 by Jeff Nyman
In this two-part post, I want to cover the distinctions between integration testing and integrated testing as well as the distinction between edge-to-edge and end-to-end testing.
Automation Execution — Here There Everywhere by Paul Grizzaffi
You’re the person responsible for your team’s initial automation suite. Using your desktop development computer, you created all the scripts, tested them extensively, and now they are ready to be used.
Overview of BackstopJS, a tool to test a web application’s UI by Adrien Lemaire
In this article, we’ll talk about the BackstopJS CSS regression testing framework, and how we integrated it in our business application to answer the questions.
SECURITY
British TV viewers targeted by email fraudsters by Graham Cluley
Much of the rest of the world may find it rather quaint, but here in the UK most people buy a license to watch TV. The TV license fee goes towards funding the BBC. If you watch or record live TV without a license you can be fined up to 1000 quid.
Unprotected Government Server Exposes Years of FBI Investigations by Swati Khandelwal
A massive government data belonging to the Oklahoma Department of Securities (ODS) was left unsecured on a storage server for at least a week, exposing a whopping 3 terabytes of data containing millions of sensitive files.
Are you sure those WhatsApp messages are meant for you? by Danny Bradbury
Senior Amazon technical expert Abby Fuller had a bit of a shock when she logged into WhatsApp using a new telephone number earlier this month. She found someone else’s messages waiting for her.
Hacking Fortnite Accounts by Alon Boxiner, Eran Vaknin and Oded Vanunu
In the last few weeks, however, Check Point Research discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Epic Games’ online platform that could have allowed a threat actor to take over the account of any game player, view their personal account information, purchase V-bucks, Fortnite’s virtual in-game currency and eavesdrop on and record players’ in-game chatter and background home conversations.
Reddit users locked out of accounts after “security concern” by Graham Cluley
A large number of Reddit users are being told that they will have to reset their passwords in order to regain access to their accounts following what the site is calling a “security concern.”
Google Chrome extension that steals card numbers still available on Web Storeby Catalin Cimpanu
A malicious Google Chrome extension that can recognize and steal payment card details entered in web forms is still available on the Chrome Web Store.
TOOLS
Pushdata.io
POST data points to the cloud and then GET them back in JSON format. Store thousands of data points for free — immediately!
Record and replay the web
rrweb is an open source web session replay library, which provides easy-to-use APIs to record user’s interactions and replay it remotely.
webhint
webhint is a linting tool that will help you with your site’s accessibility, speed, security and more, by checking your code for best practices and common errors. Use the online scanner or the CLI to start checking your site for errors.
Web Browser Security
It’s all about Web Browser Fingerprinting. Here you will find the gallery of web browser security testing tools, that tell you what exactly personal identity data may be leaked without any permissions when you surf the Internet.
ACCESSIBILITY
Big Win for Web Accessibility in Domino’s Pizza Case by Lainely Feingold
On January 15, 2019 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals gave a big win to digital accessibility in a case against Domino’s Pizza. The lower court had ruled for Domino’s and tossed the case out of court. The appeals court reversed, ruling that the ADA covers websites and mobile applications and the case can stay in court.
The First Principle of Accessibility: Perceivable by Homer Gaines
The first of the four foundational principles of accessibility is Perceivable. What this means is that anyone should be able to perceive the content by using any of their senses.
Top 10 Low Effort Improvements for Accessible Web Content by Leandra Silver
The creation of accessible sites is a collaborated dance between designers, user experience specialists, web developers, content editors, and web accessibility auditors.
Color Blindness Considerations for Designers and Content Managers by Sheri Byrne-Haber
I recently read a Medium article on negative space published by a top design agency. The article had 5000 claps, so it was widely read. Unfortunately, the article’s primary example of good use of dark negative space was completely inaccessible to people who are color blind.
Designing UI with Color Blind Users in Mind by Rich Staats
Color plays an integral role in UI design. When done right, it improves user experience, influences purchasing decisions, and reflects the brands voice.
Accessibility Mechanics by Jared Smith
Welcome to technica11y, the webinar series devoted to the technical challenges of making the web accessible. This month’s presenter is Jared Smith, Associate Director at WebAIM. And now our host and moderator, Karl Groves.
What You Need to Know About Types of Video Captions by Meryl Evans
Way back in 1983, I got my first caption decoder. It was a box about the size of two stacked DVD players. Whenever I recorded TV shows, the captions burned into the video. That means I could take the tape and watch the show on any player and see the captions.
PERFORMANCE
The Ethics of Web Performance by Tim Kadlec
One question I’ve seen posed a few times in the past several months is whether performance really is a moral or ethical concern, or if that’s all heavy-handed exaggeration.
How Improving Website Performance Can Help Save The Planet by Jack Lenox
Climate change may not seem like an issue that should concern web developers, but the truth is that our work does have a carbon footprint, and it’s about time we started to think about that.
Front-End Performance Checklist 2019 by Vitaly Friedman
Let’s make 2019… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist (PDF/Apple Pages/MS Word), with everything you need to know to create fast experiences today. Updated since 2016.
JOBS
Senior Automation QA — London, UK
Friday makes digital products for clients in a range of industries and sectors. Placing user experiences and quality at the forefront of the deliverables, the role of QA is critical.
Machine Learning Verification Engineer — Cambridge, UK
This is a unique opportunity for you to be part of a team that develops large-scale systems to tackle tough machine-learning problems. Ensuring the quality of the algorithms from probabilistic modelling, reinforcement learning and multi-agent systems you will be providing support and engineering solutions to the research teams.
MEETUPS
Meetups happening soon!
- Test Clinic — Gothenburg
- Meetup MoT SP #2 — São Paulo
- Automation in testing — Software Testing Clinic 1.9 — Brighton & Hove
- January #MidsTest with Louise Gibbs — Birmingham
- Going Undercover in the Mob — Dallas
- Testers’ Bouldering Social — London
- Ministry of Testing Leeds — January 2019 — Leeds
- Como criar uma estratégia de teste para uma User Story? — Recife
- Workshop about Exploratory Testing — Gothenburg
- MoT Berlin — Open Space — Berlin
- Cloud Testing & Training and Development — Glasgow
- Testing in Agile — Software Testing Clinic Cambridge
