The Visual Studio 2010 approach to test automation is to offer a broad solution that is a good entry point for developers looking to begin test automation. As your automation needs grow, you may run into challenges that arise from Coded UI's single approach for covering multiple technologies.
With Test Studio we address the specific automation needs of web applications. We studied the workflow of testers when automating for the web and the entire testing life-cycle which helped us identify areas that take the longest to automate or are very tedious. We've built many specialized features that cater to these needs that you will not find in VS 2010, here are a few worth noting:
DOM Explorer A full DOM explorer for your web application that supports nested frames and allows you to do rich search across the entire DOM. You can also navigate directly to specific nested Frame or iFrame with one right click and directly craft verification from it. This feature reduces your reliance on external tools and reduces the context switching between our tool and others.
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Web Verifications Build computed or in-line style verifications directly from the UI in addition to the attribute/content and CSS visibility verifications. Such scenarios are important when validating web element positioning and layering.
DOM Captures on Failure When your test fails, we capture the DOM of the page at the state of failure and display it for you to help you resolve your failure easier.
Execution Intelligence The execution engine is built to handle AJAX solutions from the ground-up and if you are executing a web test, the engine will intrinsically ensure the element exists and is visible on the page before running each step. The check for visibility uses the actual HTML/CSS visibility checks rather than UI Automation, which is much more reliable. For Silverlight scenarios we also ensure the element is not moving by doing a motion check on the actual visual element. This feature enhances the reliability of your execution dramatically so that you don't need to clutter your tests with sleeps and waits.
Find Expressions & Live Validation As many experienced testers will tell you, tests frequently fail due to element changes in the web application as it evolves. The Find Expression is a UI editor that allows you to easily resolve element find failures with a suggest feature to help you understand why the find failed. It also comes with an integrated DOM so that you can validate right there and then that you are finding the correct element instead of having to execute the test with each edit. A great time saver. |