Selenium is a very popular - open source - web application test automation - tool.

Selenium is very powerful mainly because of the programming language support it has for - ruby, python, perl, java, etc. That brings a lot of these languages' features like adding logic and handling database connections to the test tool.

Today's web applications are multi-tiered and automating tests for them is a challenge. Selenium makes life easy by providing cross-platform execution and cross-browser compatibility.

So, how do we create and run Selenium tests ? Check out the following.

Just today, I came across two instances of bugs which have gone live. It's so glaring, its surprising it made it to the world outside.

Indigo Standard Time v/s Indian Standard time mailer

This is a good one. Indigo airlines wants to tell it's customers how prompt they are when it comes to timings. See the sentence with the timings and you'll know what's wrong.

<Image coming shortly. Please bear.>

I recently found a wonderful image editing tool by name GreenShot

It is a great tool for testers to report bugs. As they say pictures speak better than words. Adding a snapshot of a bug you found always helps the developers to troubleshoot and fix problems faster.

This tool helps to capture a portion of or the entire screen and store in easy steps. You can highlight problem areas using boxes, circles and even arrows. Wow, just the tool I needed. No hifi features, just what a tester needs.

Are you having trouble getting java to work with your firefox browser on Linux.

Unlike windows, where you install Java and lo it's setup with all the browsers seamlessly, on linux it appears to be different. It still requires some manual intervention to get this working.

We were trying to test an file upload applet for one of the products under test. The tests ran fine on Windows. But on Linux, despite reinstalling java and firefox, we couldn't get the applet to run.

I have come across a lot of people asking what should be the content of a test plan. So, for the benefit of our testing community, I'm attaching a test plan template that I created and being used quite effectively in our company.

This is by no means complete. Test plans can be tailored to be big or small. It all depends on the testing requirements of your organization and the complexity of the project.

Feel free to use and modify this to your requirement.

Here's the test plan template, free to download.

Bugs are inevitable in any software development life cycle. Everybody knows that. However, you have a deadline to meet. You have a release to get over with. There comes a point in time for a release when you take a call and decide what bugs to fix and what not to fix.

Here comes the importance of bug classification. The decision on what bugs to fix and what not to fix is made based on the bug classification.

Bug classification is done primarily to separate the most important bugs from the not so important ones.

Here's what one of the innovators in the open source industry says about a career in testing. I do agree with him.

Here's a very handy option to delete blank lines from a text file on Unix.

If it's a one time operation, you don't want to spend time writing a script for it.

Open the file using 'vi' editor [ # vi testfile.txt ]

Hit 'Esc' key to ensure you are in command mode.

Type :g/^$/d and hit Enter. You are done.

Here ^ means beginning of the line and $ means end of line (a blank line with no characters on it). 'd' means delete.

If there are space characters on the blank line, you could do this:

:g/^ *$/d

Some of you may already be aware that 'Testlink' is open source test case management tool. If not, see my earlier post about Testlink here.

There are two great features provided with Testlink.

Sometimes a.k.a cross browser tests.

Testing web applications ? With a host of web browsers in the market each vying for a market share (Google Chrome is the latest entrant and I have to admit it's a cool browser), it's becoming increasingly difficult for websites to cater to a large internet community each using a different browser ( or someone like me who uses 3 browsers, please do not ask reasons  )