What are the common elements for writing and running automated UI-driven functional tests? I am a software developer, not a QA tester, so my interest is in writing some form of scripts to perform tests through a user interface; I am not into tools that record a user's UI interaction. The question arose recently, while I sat through an introduction to the custom-built testing framework of a project I am working on. (first, a clarification: by "framework" for this article I mean the custom code that a development team needs to create in order for the automated testing system to interact in a meaningful way with the production code. I do not intend it to refer to the testing platform itself. I'll call a tool like jUnit or Selenium a tool or a platform, and the set of tests, test doubles, and other artefacts of testing a specific system I will call the Framework.) My guide for the learning session had a tendency to do deep-dives into the low-level details. After sev...
Musings on Tests, Quality, Tools, Projects and more. By Steve Page