The Testable Web

The Testable Web
by Dave Haeﬀner
Prepared for the NYC Web Design Meetup
March 11, 2013

Saturday, March 16, 13

The Motley Fool

To Educate, Amuse, and Enrich


Arrgyle

Navigate The High Tech Seas


How many of you work on web things?
(e.g. websites, web applications, mobile apps)


How many of you test what you build?
(or have someone on your team who does)


How many of you primarily test manually?


How many of you primarily with automation?


How many of you test with a mix of both?


How many of you don’t test?


Show of hands if any of these are true for you:

Save testing for the end of the cycle
Feel like there isn’t enough time to adequately test
Feel unnerved when it’s time to release
Find issues in production


The Dirty Little Secrets of Testing


#1: You don’t have to test everything


Pareto Analysis


#2: Everything You Need to know about testing,
you learned in Kindegarten.


Finding the Glitter Glue Path


Questions worth asking,
to help you ﬁnd your glitter glue path


How does your business*
make make money/deliver value?

* the business you are building software for

How do the users actually use it?


What are the prominent/relevant traits of your users
(e.g. browser types, geographic location, etc.)?


What things have bitten you before?


“An example would be handy right about now”
- Brian Marick


7 Automated Acceptance Tests*
Successful platform upgrade


These things can take time.

You have my permission to try until you get it right.


ext


When To Automate?
Questions worth asking


How long will it take to test manually?


How long will it take to test manually?

This will help you get a baseline before answering the
following questions.


How often will this functionality need to be checked?


How often will this functionality need to be checked?

If often, then it is likely a good candidate for automation.


Is it valuable (e.g. core functionality, used heavily, a legal
or political requirement)?


Is it valuable (e.g. core functionality, used heavily, a legal
or political requirement)?

If yes, then it is very likely a candidate for automation.


How risky is the feature (e.g. fundamental changes,
complex architecture, large user facing impact)?


How risky is the feature (e.g. fundamental changes,
complex architecture, large user facing impact)?

High? Medium? Or Low?

If Medium to High, then maybe.


What is the level of effort to automate?


What is the level of effort to automate?

T-shirt sizing will help you here:
Small: 0-2 hours
Medium: 1-2 days
Large: 2-4 days
X-Large >= 1 week

If large or higher, probably not

But it really depends
on what other work you have committed to


Does it involve look and feel?


Does it involve look and feel?

If so, then it is likely a ripe candidate for manual testing.


How To Automate (strategy)?


http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestPyramid.html

Build a feedback loop

(Version Control are table stakes)


Version Control System (VCS)


Continuous Integration (CI)


How to Automate (tactics)?


Choose your weapon


Consider Your Current Tech Stack


Then Layer In Your Team’s Context
(strengths, comfort, conﬁdence, excitement/interest)


Programming Language?

Doesn’t have to be the same as what you develop in.


Who will own this?


Open Source Testing Tools


Agile Alliance Functional Testing Tool group
http://bit.ly/AgileTestTools


But let’s assume UI is involved.

In that case, something with WebDriver.


Full Disclosure: I have some opinions on this

Released an open-source web testing framework
for Selenium WebDriver

http://arrgyle.com/blog/automated-web-testing-is-hard/


World’s Quickest Overview on how Selenium works


Selenium...

is a robot sent from the future to help us test web
sites

uses locators (id, name, link, css, xpath, etc.) to
interact with the html elements of the page (a.k.a
‘ﬁnd by strategy’)

------

The simplest and most sustainable way is to use
straight up CSS.

How to build UI tests so you won’t hate yourself


Santi says...


Record & Playback is merely a stepping stone
Export your tests
Treat them like code
Page Object Pattern


He also says:
Only use UI tests when you have to...


But won’t they be slow?


In Practice


Test Pack 1 Test Pack 2
VCS CI
Simple checks Automated
Builds, Acceptance
Unit Tests Tests

Local Dev


Garbage In, Garbage Out


A more testable UI


More semantic markup
(e.g. unique and descriptive locators)


Inventory and consolidate your design patterns


But really, it’s about usability


“The more people think about usability, the more
things tend to work out. It's a virtuous path.”

- Ken Pier, Senior Director of Product Quality,
Socialtext


“It’s only words and photos on the internet.”

- John F. Croston III, Web Content Accessibility
Manager for the United States Army (army.mil)


Outro


Recap

• You Don’t Have To Test Everything

• But do test, intelligently, asking yourself

• What matters?

• Should I automate this?

• Choose a toolchain that’s right for you and your team

• Build a feedback loop

• Build a more descriptive, usable, and testable web


I’m writing a book about this stuff!

arrgyle.com/book

@TourDeDave dave@arrgyle.com

Appendix


• A practical guide to usability: http://jfciii.com/presentations/wasp/
accessibility.html

• How to address risk in Agile (view it like an investment portfolio): http://
arrgyle.com/blog/agile-accounting/

• Automated Web Testing Is Hard (Introducing ChemistryKit, an open source
testing framework to make automated web testing easier): http://arrgyle.com/
blog/automated-web-testing-is-hard/

• CSS Selectors in Selenium: http://sauceio.com/index.php/2010/01/selenium-
totw-css-selectors-in-selenium-demystiﬁed/

• Locators in Selenium http://marakana.com/bookshelf/selenium_tutorial/
locators.html


• Page Objects in Selenium: https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/
PageObjects

• Page Objects Ruby Gem: https://github.com/cheezy/page-object


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