12.20.06

Are You Really a Software Tester? by David Whalen

Posted in Humour at 5:12 pm by Željko Filipin

I have just read Are You Really a Software Tester? by David Whalen. It is a short, funny story. He describes how he tested search feature of computer terminal at the local bookstore. It reminded me of numerous times when I was in similar situation.

12.05.06

Tests and How-To Documents (2)

Posted in Watir at 7:36 pm by Željko Filipin

I have already written about Tests and How-To Documents.

How cool is this? If you have one of those cool browsers like Firefox or Opera, this page is even cooler. :)

The essence of that page is made automatically while my tests were running. My developer added a little CSS and JavaScript (Mootools) magic to it, and now it looks really nice. Please notice that it is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict.

12.04.06

Connect Gmail and Google Calendar

Posted in Software at 2:42 pm by Željko Filipin

I just love Gmail.

I am just trying Google Calendar, and it looks good.

What I would like to see is Gmail and Google Calendar connected. There are contacts in Gmail. I would like that there is option to add birthday/anniversary field to contact and option to automatically include birthday/anniversary of that contact to my calendar (like Outlook has).

I listen to Gmail Podcast. In Suggest Features episode I found out that I can suggest that feature to Gmail team. If you think that is good idea, go to https://services.google.com/inquiry/gmail_suggest/ and write something like:

Connect Gmail and Google Calendar - add birthday/anniversary field to contact and add option to automatically include birthday/anniversary of that contact to my calendar.

Data Generator

Posted in Testing at 12:42 pm by Željko Filipin

My developer pointed me to Benjamin Keen’s Data Generator.

This little program lets you generate large volumes of random, custom data for use in testing software.

Looks good. I will try it and write more about it if I find some inspiration (and time).

12.01.06

Faster FileField#set

Posted in Watir at 4:41 pm by Željko Filipin

This is slightly edited conversation Is there a way to make file_field.set faster? from wtr-general mailing list.

Me:

Is there a way to make file_field.set faster?

I have noticed that this is the slowest part of my tests. It takes about 10 seconds to set file field. I have read that it can not be set directly because that would be security issue, but I wonder what I could do to make it faster. I upload extremely small files (a few bytes), but I have to do it frequently, and every time it takes about 10 seconds just to set file field.

Mark Cain:

This works for me and it is much faster because it uses the handle of the object.

Me:

startClicker works double faster than file_field.set.

Then I removed line with “sleep 3″.

Me:

It is now even faster (for three seconds) after I removed line with “sleep 3″ (when I noticed that comment says that it can be removed) .

file_field.set needed approximately 10,6 seconds to set file field, startClicker 4,4, and when I removed “sleep 3″, it is down to 1,4. That saved me approximately 9 seconds for each file upload (and I do it a lot).

Paul Rogers also suggested AutoIt, but this works fast enough, so I did not even try it.