When do you think is best to to use a mobile App Maker (Ex: Appery.io) and when to code using a framework (Ex: Ionic)?
Of course, that coding with a framework doesn't tie you to any App Maker label... But, besides that, any other matter I should consider.
I need to start a simple project that querys a some REST API and have some doubts.
So I thought about posting here to open my head to someone who has walked this road before.
I don't mean this to be an open ended question on what is the best framework and comparing them all. I am just trying to establish is it really necessary to go down the heavier more complicated frameworks or can I get a mature long term solution using something like Appery?
Thanks!
When it comes to mobile apps, and as in your case, apps that load dynamic data from server, it is usually better to go for mobile app frameworks rather than, for online app builders. There can be multiple reasons for this :
App builders usually come with a lot of features, but they almost always fail for some Custom client requirements.
They usually tend to cater the need for static apps, when it comes to dynamic apps that have a lot of data manipulation stuff, you should prefer your own framework and logic to do so..
You can almost everytime modify / tweak a framework, You can't do so with an appbuilder.
You aren't sharing your code on cloud [Matters if you are working for some critical organization / client].
You have total control over your code / view. You can tweak it, twist it and almost guarantee total ownership. All you are bound to is the limitation your framework imposes.
You can mix and match frameworks, that doesn't applies for an appbuilder.
These are some of my quick thoughts, there can be [and are] many more reasons for switching towards a mobile framework..
AppMakers are generally there as tools for Rapid Prototyping. These days they market that you can make production apps using Appmakers but when you start using them you will notice that one or some other requirement you have cannot be implemented. In my experience, app development time seems to be less for AppMakers but it is generally more. On the other hand Mobile App Frameworks provide a lot of flexibility and code reusability too.
I'm developing a mobile application for WP7 based on an existing Silverlight desktop application. I want to perform a test comparison between both applications concerning the user interaction and experience.
I known that exists several software testing methods. But none of them fit in what I really want to test, which is having the right metrics to perform the comparison.
Right now I believe that Usability Testing is the closest from what I want that is:
Compare the way of performing similar actions
Compare the degree of similarity
The adaptability capacity of using the mobile app against the desktop application
Sorry for the weird question :P
And thank you in advance...
The tests you describe are all very subjective.
I don't see any approach other than testing manually.
We are developing a Silverlight LOB app. It would be great for users to be able to click a help button on the top of a page and have the app walk them through the functions of the page as though the movements and key strokes were pre-recorded.
I've not really familiar with automation on any GUI framework but googling around it seems most of it is geared towards testing. In my case, i'd want the mouse to move around the screen naturally, so a recording makes more sense. I'm pretty sure I could simulate such a recording with a very detailed timeline but this wouldnt be practical to code.
Is it possible to record an interaction like this and then have it play back purely on an SL client? I dont mind if I have to use an external tool to make the tests, but the training sessions need to run totally in Silverlight.
Its going to way way easier to create a training video using the variety of tools specifically designed for this sort of thing. Results of such tools you have probably already seen when watching demo vids for developing silverlight from site such as Channel9 and MSDN learning.
You could then simply use Silverlight's media elements to run such a video as part of your apps help system.
Creating actual automations that can be watched by a human will be much harder. Bear in that a huge advantage of video is that it can be paused and re-wound which is vital for your objective to actually be achieved well. This would be some thing like monumentally difficult to impossible to do using the automation approach.
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Looking for a tool to UI testing of a Windows (.NET WinForms) application. The idea is that the analysts will record the tests via some UI and it will be able to be played back over and over again.
Commercial tools are fine but bonus points for free ones.
Some others:
NUnitForms
Quail
I believe they're both free, and Quail looks really nice!
(I was going to just comment on an answer above, but ran out of room.)
We bought Ranorex, and I wouldn't do it again. Their licensing for 1.5 (what we're using) was unclear. Their written license was per user, their marketing said per machine. Still, enforcement was key-based, and not a big deal when a machine got wiped or a replacement tester came in.
For the 2.0 product, their licensing is now tied to the machine. Reimage a machine and you get to relicense it. I'm just not going to support that kind of hassle with my company's thousands of dollars, and we didn't upgrade.
For what they want for the product, a lot of the functionality could be easily written using the UI Automation Framework. Ranorex is a decent product, but I question its value for the money. We're moving a lot of our new tests to just coding to the UI Automation Framework, as we often end up modifying Ranorex-generated code anyway.
TestComplete.
You can definitely use capture-replay to capture and run the test script. But I would suggest that you must at least manually edit your scripts to make them
more readable
easier to maintain.
The good thing about TestComplete is that it is able to look into your form's properties, capture those properties so that you can refer to those properties by their name, not by just screen coordinates.
Like Tom E stated, do take caution while considering going down the record/playback path for test automation.
See Uncle Bob's article on Ruining your Test Automation Strategy.
The main problem is that the record/playback tools couple the tests to the GUI which makes them very fragile.
Uncle Bob's article does point out that some testing needs to occur on the GUI...but that he recommends stubbing out the business rule code.
Sorry I can't provide you with a specific UI test automation tool...but hopefully this caveat will help you make the best decision on how to employ the tool that you eventually use.
So far I have found:
Ranorex which looks really good.
Test Automation FX, also looks good and seems very well priced.
Microsoft's UI Automation Framework, which does not have the recorder but if I had to I could code one using this.
white which looks similar to the UI Automation Framework, but has an alpha quality recorder.
Comments please if you have used any of these.
At my company, we decided to go with http://www.sikuli.org/. We felt it was the perfect mix of cost (free), ease-of-use, functionality and extend-ability.
Sikuli is Python based (Jython, really) which is great and its open-source. There's a tiny bit of coding required, but it can be as easy as just calling functions. Their IDE makes it really easy to get started. It is not a record and playback tool. It functions based on computer vision algorithms - you give it screenshots of what to look for and it finds it on the screen and then performs the requested action (click, type, etc) on what it found. This is true independent testing since Sikuli knows nothing about the software its testing. It does not know about underlying APIs - it just does what a real human would do.
We have integrated Sikuli with Robot Framework, http://robotframework.org/, and have created lots of custom python code to build a robust testing platform. This may not be as easy as licensing a tool from a vendor but the time and talent investment in these two open source tools has been well worth it.
There are a bunch of similar questions on SO:
automate-interaction-with-a-gui-interface (Edit: no longer available)
automated-testing-of-windows-forms (Edit: no longer available)
automated-testing-of-gui
In my experience, there are a lot of good open source tools for the web, but not so much selection for open source thick client test automation tools. If you want good support with robust functionality, especially recording, you will need to look at the commercial tools (QTP, RFT, TestPartner, etc...)
You should have a look at http://opensourcetesting.org/functional.php A lot of tools are listed here and you should find something that meet your needs.
Visual Studio Team Test 2010 is coming with a tool for recording and playing back UI tests. You'll find some pointers at:
Introduction to Record and Playback Engine in VSTT 2010
Checkout Ranorex, commercial, quite expensive but powerful (not affiliated).
We were using Mercury TestDirector a few years ago and quite happy with it. (All the caveats as mentioned by others apply.)
Mercury was aquired by HP and the tools have been rebranded as HP QuickTest. Not sure how much has changed, but certainly worth a look.
I tried to include a link to the HP website, but the URL doesn't look too "stable". Not exactly a confidence builder ....
My proposal is QA Agent(http://qaagent.com/). It is free web based IDE for development of web automated tests. Basically you are using jQuery to develop your tests. You can run tests in your browser. It looks like a new projects, but I really like the idea to develop tests in the browser. You know how long it takes to set up your testing environment. With QA Agent it takes 10 seconds.
Has anybody got any real world stories build mobile web sites with NetBiscuits?
Someone told me it was the next big thing in mobile development (http://www.netbiscuits.com/home) and it looks pretty good from their site. Just wondered if anybody (besides them) has actually used it.
From a few months time working with it, I can say that they're indeed one of the best (if not the best) out there. The support is also insanely quick and good.
Only thing making me stop using it is the price. Especially if you're a small company and want to use their POI feature.
However I have yet to find a good replacement. May end up rolling my own version...
Edit: Related question.
They have created an entire xml (bml) based markup language that emulates html that has a very steep learning curve. I would seriously reconsider using it.
I have seen it working nicely. It also supports ASP.NET controls SDK that can be used to write ASP.NET app from Visual Studio. Once this app is deployed on your premise, you can use live bridge agent to connect this app to a Live Bridge server that Net Biscuits hosts. Your app is called a backend app in this case. This is a very useful feature when you do want to have Forms capability in your app and also want it to be accessible on NetBiscuits platform.
Check http://kb.netbiscuits.com/tactile/edc/livebridge_help.html. BiscuitML is also easier to grasp.
Look out for performance issues though. Customers in Australia have had response time issues - probably due to the Cloud Platform being located in USA/UK.