To celebrate the recent launch of version 1.0 earlier this month, join us for a panel discussion with Appium's Chief Architect Jonathan Lipps, Core Appium Contributor Matthew Edwards, and Appium creator Dan Cuellar.

1. mobile automation made awesome
@AppiumDevs | @saucelabs
Live Panel / Core Committers Q&A
5/29/2014

2. Necessity is the mother of invention

3. The Problem
• Mistakes in iOS applications are expensive
• You have to live with bugs until the App Store has
approved the build with your fixes
•best case a couple of days
• Testing mobile phones is physically exhausting
• These things are designed to be used all day
•tiny keyboards
•tiny screens

4. Developing a Solution
• Why can’t we automate it, like we do with websites?
• Instruments UIAutomation has issues
• must be programmed in javascript
• must be run in a sandbox (no access to outside
world)
• control is scripted and non-realtime

5. The Solution
• use shell command method to talk to the outside word
• with friends like /bin/cat and python you can do
anything
• run commands using eval()
• make a real-time server
• repurpose the JSON wire protocol

6. Assembling supporters

7. Building Support
• April 2012
• Appium (called iOSAuto at the time) was demoed as
an SeConf 2012 Lightning talk
• November 2012
• Jason Huggins jumps in and helps rewrite the code
for the Mobile Test Summit
• January 2013
• Open Source project begins, Android support is
added

8. Gaining Traction
• June 2013
• Appium is presented at SeConf 2013 alongside
Selendroid, iOSDriver and others
• Result: Selenium project endorses freedom of choice
• May 2013
• Appium 1.0

9. World domination

10. Lessons Learned
• If at first you don’t succeed, rewrite the entire codebase
and try again
• The most awesome thing will win
• With a strong community, there’s going to be someone
who can solve that problem that you find impossible

11. appium 1.0 and beyond

12. The road to 1.0
• 16 months of hard work
• Starting code and community from scratch
• Many conferences and road trips to spread the word
• Amazing help from community contributors large and
small
• Surpassing all expectations and getting the attention of
the world
• OSS Rookie of the Year, anyone?

13. What’s new
• Stability
• New client libraries
• New, more sensible desired caps
• New Xpath support
• Android hybrid support
• New, more sensible locator strategies
• MultiAction gesture API
• New docs/tutorials

14. What’s new
• Companies large and small adopting Appium
• (Who says it’s not “battle-tested”?)
• appium-discuss list blowing up
• Moving to a new solution soon
• More and more community members contributing code
• Demand for support outpacing what a few of us can
handle

15. What’s next
• Major focus on doc/tutorial content---need to make
things easier for beginners and mobile novices
• Bugfixes
• More tests and a CI to run testsuite on every commit, for
improved quality and fewer regressions
• Systematizing project management, prioritizing new
directions for Appium
• Efforts to engage the community (you!) to pitch in and
make Appium better, and to help support each other
better

16. Recording of Live Panel with Core
Appium Contributors
Link:
https://saucelabsreview.webex.com/saucelabsr
eview/lsr.php?RCID=f6852510974c4cfe9fac26
53445fb5c2

17. appium.io
github.com/appium/appium
@AppiumDevs | @saucelabs
Q&A!