Abel Wang, Principal Cloud Advocate for Microsoft Azure DevOps, spoke in an Applitools webinar recently. His called his webinar: DevOps and Quality in the Era of CI-CD: An Inside Look at How Microsoft Does It. Because he knows the workings of the team, Abel knows what it takes to operate Azure DevOps. In this webinar, Abel described why the build-test-release model was too slow, and he explained what drove changes in their development team enabled them to deliver software with both speed and quality. He explained that the combination of Azure DevOps plus visual testing results in better developer productivity, higher quality, even with frequent releases on a rapid cadence. And, Abel described how he came across Applitools as a way to provide visual testing for the Microsoft Azure DevOps development team, and why he likes Applitools so much.

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What Is Visual Testing?

Visual testing is how you ensure that your app appears to the user as you intended.

In today’s world, in the world of HTML, web developer create pages that appear on a mix of browsers and operating systems. Because HTML and CSS are standards, frontend developers want to feel comfortable with a ‘write once, run anywhere’ approach to their software. Which also translates to “Let QA sort out the implementation issues.” QA is still stuck checking each possible output combination for visual bugs.

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At the end of this week, we’ll be joining test automation experts at the conference wth the coolest acronym ever: ATTAC, which stands for Australian Test and Tech Automation Conference 2019.

What is Australian Test and Tech Automation Conference (ATTAC)? ATTAC (@AussieTesters, #ATTAC19) is an annual conference hosted by Test Engineering Alliance Melbourne, that brings together leaders in the test automation community to discuss the latest in software testing technology and trends.

Those who attend ATTAC 2019 will discover the latest best practices in assisted testing and test automation tooling. Attendees will also have access to hands-on demonstrations and will have the opportunity to experience a tailored and in-depth walkthrough of the testing technology most pertinent to their organizations and roles. Read more…

For years, the automated visual testing of PDFs was incredibly challenging, if not impossible. Because of this, teams would automate their UI tests but would skip the part where they visually test that their PDF artifacts were accurate. This then became the boring, mundane, error-prone task left for the testers to repeat release after release.

Since then, visual validation tools such as Applitools Eyes have hit the scene making the automated visual regression testing – the regression testing of the look and feel of an application – possible. A common question I receive is “does Applitools work for PDFs?”. I knew the answer was yes, but I decided to actually give it a try myself to see exactly how it works.

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What is Tricentis Accelerate? Tricentis Accelerate (@Tricentis, #triacc), is an annual event hosted by our friends at Tricentis that aims to bring the DevOps, software testing, and QA automation community together for two full days of learning and networking. Speaker session topics cover themes around open source, leadership best practices, testing metrics and more. This year’s conference will be held at Hilton San Francisco Union Square on May 22-23.

This year’s theme is Automation @ the Speed of Change — representing the industry’s most modern testing practices and aiming to educate conference goers on how to transform software testing to accelerate their digital transformation. Read more…

Watch Joe Colantonio interview Greg Sypolt — Director of Quality Engineering @ Gannett | USA Today — and learn how he built his Dev/Test team for success – including: hiring test engineers, organizational culture, must-have tools, work processes, and best practices.  Read more…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Interview with Ram Nathaniel, Head of Computer Vision Algorithms at Applitools

Ram Nathaniel joined Applitools in 2017, with a mission to make visual AI and visual testing accessible to all frontend developers and functional testers across all web platforms and devices. To do this, he set about building a team of innovative algorithm developers. They apply computer vision and deep learning techniques to complex and challenging algorithmic problems. Armed with over 20 years experience, Ram is growing his Algorithms team at Applitools, and is dedicated to hiring the most creative and passionate people in the industry.

Ram sat down with us to explain his work and his team.Read more…

Test code can get as messy as a network closet.

Your test code is a mess. You’re not quite sure where anything is anymore. The fragility of it is causing your builds to fail. You’re hesitant to make any changes for fear of breaking something else. The bottom line is that your tests do not spark joy, as organizing guru Marie Kondo would say.

What’s worse, you’re not really sure how you got to this point. In the beginning, everything was fine. You even modeled your tests after the ones demonstrated in the online tutorials from your favorite test automation gurus. You were so proud to see these initial tests running successfully.

But you didn’t realize your test code was built upon a rocky foundation. Those tutorials were meant to be a “getting started” guide, void of the architectural complexity that, to be honest, you weren’t quite ready for just yet.

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Over the next two months, members of the Applitools team will be joining software development and testing experts around the world as the guest speaking circuit heats up ahead of mid-year.

As you will read below, the topics being presented are diverse; ranging from automated visual testing, continuous integration testing, practical tips from the AI build and test trenches, enabling the next generation of coders, preparing for the age of virtual reality, and the modern day testing realities of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

We are honored to have our own experts at Applitools take the stage alongside some of the best and brightest technologists in the world. Our team looks forward to meeting you and are thrilled to share all they’ve learned with respect to the latest and greatest in AI-powered end-to-end visual testing & monitoring.

Join us at the following sessions: Read more…

This week, we’ll be joining thought leaders, evangelists, innovative practitioners, and IT professionals at the QAI QUEST 2019 Conference in Chicago, Illinois!

Have you heard about QAI QUEST 2019? QUEST 2019 (@QAIquest, #QAIQuest2019), has become known as the best source for new technologies and proven methods for Quality Engineered Software and Testing. This is an opportunity to network with IT professionals from across North America for a week packed with classes, tutorials, educational sessions, hands-on workshops, discussions groups, EXPO, and networking events.Read more…

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Jay Phelps, Reactive Programming nut and compiler enthusiast.

Testing, for me, is a love-hate relationship. On one hand, I absolutely love the feeling that comes from having great test coverage: I can ship new features fast, fix bugs and be confident they won’t return, and above all, effectively collaborate with teams both large and small. On the other hand, writing and maintaining visual UI tests takes time. And I’ll be honest: Even if I love the results, I don’t enjoy writing them.

But over the years of writing tests in countless languages, frameworks, and platforms, I’ve found that not all tests are in fact worth the effort when you’re testing applications rather than libraries. As Kent C. Dodds says in his wonderful post:Read more…

This list of pitfalls to avoid when testing in production serve as my notes on Amber Race’s Webinar: The Joy of Testing in Production

If you don’t already know her, Amber Race is a rockstar. She’s a senior software development engineer in testing (SDET) at Big Fish Games. Through her amazing experiences, she continues to gain wisdom on a subject often thought of as taboo in the world of software development: testing in production.

Now, some people think that testing in production is bad, which results in this common meme:Read more…

How do you run cross browser testing today?

Applitools released a new product and it looks to be rather innovative. Focused on visual testing, Applitools first caught my eye with a 2015 demo which showed how their algorithms could detect the difference between a layout modification and a content modification on a webpage, quite the step up from pixel-perfect image diffing that other early visual UI testing tools were doing.

Their new product, Visual Grid, drastically improves the speed of running a suite of cross browser visual UI tests. Visual Grid improves speed and reduces cost for all teams using visual web testing, but I’m personally excited about the opportunity for promoting visual testing habits directly to frontend developers. Frontend developers can now get instant feedback for their changes across an array of desktop and mobile browsers. Applitools bets that if the total time of visual UI test suites can be reduced to seconds or minutes, they can be fit into the instant feedback cycle employed by modern developers while actively coding. There’s a huge difference between waiting an hour to find out if your commits broke something and waiting a minute. Retaining a developer’s flow-state boosts productivity, and reduces frustration.Read more…

Last week, we sat down to speak to Yarden Naveh, Director of Customer Success at Applitools, based in the San Mateo office. Yarden’s career path has combined his passion for innovative technology with his desire to make these technologies accessible to wider audiences.  In this interview, Yarden talks about how a Customer Success role at Applitools links products and people with successful outcomes. He describes how, in his role, he enjoys working with a multitude of people every day.  Through his work in Customer Success, Yarden continues to develop and apply his engineering and people skills across a varied and challenging array of technical projects.

Yarden is currently hiring for several positions within his team in the US and Israel. If you want to learn more about these, check out our jobs page.Read more…

Creating and maintaining a flawless and smooth user experience is no small feat.

Not only do you need to ensure that the backend and front-end are functioning and appearing as expected, but also you must verify that this is the case across hundreds (if not thousands) of possible combos of screen-size/browser/operating systems.

And if that wasn’t enough – you are deploying and releasing continuously, in a rapidly changing ecosystem of devices, competitors, and technologies.

So how do you keep track of all those moving parts, in real time, in order to prevent functional and UI fails?

In this hands-on session, Gleb Bahmutov (VP Engineering @ Cypress.io) and Gil Tayar (Sr. Architect @ Applitools) demonstrated how you can safeguard your app’s functionality and UI across all digital platforms, with end-to-end tests. They presented — step-by-step — how to write functional tests, which ensure that the application performs user actions correctly, as well as how to write visual tests that guarantee that the application does not suffer embarrassing UI bugs, glitches and regressions.

Watch this practical, hands-on session, and learn how to: Read more…

So, you want to know about visual testing for your Vue.js app in Storybook using Applitools? So did I!

In this article, I’ll walk you through a complete, step-by-step guide of how to visually test a Vue.js app with Storybook and Applitools.

If you’re not already familiar, Applitools is an automated visual regression testing framework. It focuses on the visual aspects of your app and plays a major role in exposing the visual differences between baseline snapshots and both current and future snapshots.

Applitools integrates with dozens of development and testing frameworks, such as Cypress.io, Storybook, and Selenium. It provides SDKs for use in your projects to seamlessly communicate and interact with Applitools, in order to send both baseline and test screenshots.

Read more…

Next week, we are joining software testing experts and practitioners at the Rosen Centre Hotel in sunny Orlando, Florida for STAREAST 2019!

What is STAREAST? STAREAST (@TechWell, #STAREAST) is an annual conference hosted by TechWell that brings together some of the leading minds and influencers in software testing and test automation. STAREAST 2019 takes place in Orlando, Florida, April 28 – May 3.

This year’s topics and themes feature conference sessions and networking events covering DevOps, performance testing and monitoring, security, Big Data and much more. We are honored to have Applitools test automation experts take the stage and lead hands-on tutorials at the conference.

Join us at the following sessions: Read more…

(Cover photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash)

You need to test your service APIs. You may expand your application into a service API. Or, you may consume someone else’s service API. How do you guarantee the behavior of your own service API? And how do you ensure that your application which depends on a third-party service API? Whether you develop your own service APIs or depend on others, learn to test your service APIs.

This imperative lies at the heart of the Test Automation University course, “Exploring Service APIs through Test Automation”, with instructor Amber Race (Twitter: @ambertests). We’re offering courses like this to help engineers like yourself think about, and improve, the quality of your services through test automation.Read more…

Next week we are joining test automation, Selenium and Sauce Labs power-users at the Hyatt Regency Austin for SauceCon 2019!

What is SauceCon? SauceCon (@saucecon, #SauceCon) is an annual conference hosted by Sauce Labs that brings together the software testing and test automation community to share, network and explore the latest trends and technologies in this space.

SauceCon 2019 takes place in Austin, Texas, April 23-25 and features speakers from companies like Charles Schwab, Fannie Mae, and the New York Times. We are honored to have Applitools test automation experts take the stage to share their insights on testing techniques and tools. Join us at the following sessions: Read more…

Abel Wang — Principal Cloud Advocate, DevOps @ Microsoft

Watch this on-demand session for an inside look at how Microsoft navigates DevOps in the era of CI-CD.

Abel Wang — Sr. DevOps expert @ Microsoft — discussed what DevOps is, why it’s important, and what products help MSFT solve DevOps challenges.
Abel also showed how Microsoft copes with, and solves, a major DevOps challenge: maintaining quality across its Dev/Test pipeline.

With 70% of companies citing CI-CD as a top strategic initiative, we no longer question the need for DevOps — but implementing a successful DevOps practice and maintaining app quality remain challenging for companies of all sizes.

At Microsoft, DevOps means something specific: DevOps is the union of people, processes and products enabling the continuous delivery of value to end users.
This union isn’t easy.
Aligning these three pillars takes careful planning. Making sure the right culture, the right software development processes, and the right products and tools are in place enables this comprehensive DevOps mindset.

Among the topics covered:  Read more…

Later this week, we’re joining test automation and Selenium experts and practitioners at the Tower Hall Funabori for SeleniumConf Tokyo 2019!

What is SeleniumConf? SeleniumConf (@seleniumconf, #SeConfTokyo) is a software testing conference held twice a year at various places across the globe, and hosted by our friends at the Selenium Project. Selenium Conf is known for featuring the top minds in test automation, sharing the latest updates and best practices on stage, through conference networking opportunities, and hands-on workshops. SeleniumConf Tokyo is taking place in Funabori, Tokyo, Japan, April 18-19.

We are proud to be taking the stage alongside prominent members and users of Selenium, as well as our test automation friends from all corners of the globe. Join us for three expert sessions: Read more…

What do you think are best practices for front end testing? On April 3, 2019, Adam Carmi, our CTO and Co-Founder, joined a panel discussed this topic on a This Dot Media webinar. The webinar title was “This.Javascript: State of Front End Testing.”  Moderated by Tracy Lee of This Dot, the panel included:

• Guillermo Rauch – Founder & CEO, Zeit (@rauchg, @zeithq)
• Gleb Bahmutov – VP of Engineering, Cypress (@bahmutov, @cypress_io)
• Simen Bekkhus – Developer, Folio (@SBekkhus, @folio, @fbjest)
• Adam Carmi – Co-Founder and CTO, Applitools (@carmiadam, @applitools)
• Kevin Lamping – Developer, Test Automation (@klamping)
• Vikram Subramanian – Googler, Angular Universal (@vikerman)
• Tracy Lee – Founder, This Dot & RxJS Core Team (@ladyleet ‏, @thisdotmedia)

The panel covered a broad range of test issues. Adam began his segment by zeroing in on a simple problem: how small changes can have huge impacts on front end behavior. Specifically, how can developers account for changes in their CSS?

Read more…

One of the great things about Slack is the long list of integrations available. Whether it’s an integration as foundational as Google Drive, GitHub, or Zendesk — or as whimsical as Lunch Train — there are Slack integrations for a wide range of use cases.

Here’s an example of Slack’s GitHub integration:

With that backdrop, we’d like to show you how to integrate your Applitools Eyes visual UI test results into one of your Slack channels — something that our customers have frequently requested.

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One of the perks of my job is that we have lunch brought in a couple of times a week. On those days, we’re all eagerly awaiting an email from our office manager with the link to a Doordash order form. We have less than an hour to get our orders in, so everyone stops whatever they are doing to make their selections before it closes. And of course, we’re all doing different things.

I’m a late bird, so I’m usually in transit to the office during this time. So, I need to make the order from my Android cell phone. And on some days, I’m watching videos when the pleasant interruption comes through, so my phone is in landscape mode.

Another coworker may be at their desk – plugged into a huge desktop monitor.

Someone else may be in a meeting and need to use their laptop to place their order using Chrome. There will be others in that same meeting who may be using Firefox or Safari. Then of course, there will be someone in the meeting who didn’t bring their laptop, so they’ll need to order from their iPhone.

Being a tester, I got to thinking “wow, that sure is a lot of configurations Doordash has to test”. All of us are accessing the same form from different browsers, devices, and viewports, and yet we all have the expectation of a flawless experience. Our lunch depends on it!

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Recently I’ve put together a bunch of tutorials: an overview of Applitools, how to test Storybook with Angular, how to quickly troubleshoot bugs in React apps, and how to test Vue apps with Cypress.

If you’ve gone through these, you’ll notice that the visual tests complete in seconds — faster than Nic Cage can jack your ride.

How so fast?

The answer is simple: Applitools Visual Grid. Each time you run a visual test in Applitools, Visual Grid renders that page across a broad range of browsers and configurations. In parallel. In seconds.

Read more…

Applitools provides an end-to-end software testing platform powered by Visual AI. It can be used by people in engineering, test automation, manual QA, DevOps, and Digital Transformation teams.

What does Applitools do? Find bugs that functional tests miss, like the one above.

That’s an actual visual bug from Instagram’s mobile app in March 2019. It’s a sponsored ad, meaning that one of Facebook’s customers paid good money for this placement.

How did this bug make it into their app?

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Amber Race – Sr. SDET @ Big Fish Games

“Watch this deep-dive session, where I demonstrate multiple methods you can use for collecting production data, as well as give real-life examples of how production data can help you find bugs, and even enable running tests in production.” — Amber Race

Our software doesn’t run in a test environment with mock users — it runs out in the real world, being used by thousands or even millions of real people, with thousands of variations of devices, screen sizes, and operating systems.

Learn why you need to be collecting this data — and how you can make it actionable for continuous testing, learning and improving, as well as how it can help you make your own services more transparent and user-friendly to your customers.

Watch this webinar by expert Amber Race — Sr. SDET @ Big Fish Games — and learn: Read more…

Later this week, we’ll be joining software testing professionals at the STPCon Spring 2019! The event will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, California from April 1-4.

What is STPCon 2019? STPCon 2019 (@SoftwareTestPro, #STPCon) serves the global software testing and quality assurance community, providing more than 50,000 professionals with information, education, and professional networking opportunities. It is a premier event where test leadership, management, and strategy converge. Test and QA practitioners gather from across the industry to discuss and amplify practices for agile testing, performance testing, test automation, AI, machine learning, mobile application testing, and test team leadership and management. Read more…

Next week, we’ll be joining FinTech leaders and IT pros at the 2019 QA Financial Forum in Chicago, Illinois.

What is QA Financial Forum, you ask? The QA Financial Forum (@QA_financial, #QAFF) is one of the leading conferences for software quality assurance professionals in financial services. An exclusive event, QA Financial Forum is a place where some of the leading domain experts and IT practitioners in financial technology convene to detail experience reports from their digital transformation journeys, value stream management, continuous app delivery, and more. The speaker line-up features companies like Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase. This year, the event will be held at the Chicago Metropolitan Club in the Willis Tower on April 2.Read more…

Next week, we will be joining thousands of business marketing professionals at Adobe Summit 2019 in Las Vegas!

What is Adobe Summit? Adobe Summit (@AdobeSummit, #AdobeSummit) is the premier global digital experience conference, bringing together over 14,000 digital marketing technologists and professionals in Las Vegas. Attendees will learn, share, and discover the latest trends and strategies in transforming and delivering personalized, engaging customer experiences. Read more…