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Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter
Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter
52 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 4, 2016
One thing that i disliked was that the guy made me create a Maven project in eclipse for getting on with selenium. I struggled three days for getting maven project work but it wont. Blame it on my tight schedule that had to resist the temptation of picking up a book on Maven while leaving the current one aside.
I finally decide to do it using a java project in eclipse and finish off the book in 4 hours.
Book did give me a nice kickstart in selenium but i fail to understand why would a selenium starter's book get you tangled up in maven.
I finally decide to do it using a java project in eclipse and finish off the book in 4 hours.
Book did give me a nice kickstart in selenium but i fail to understand why would a selenium starter's book get you tangled up in maven.
June 6, 2013
As per http://spikyorange.co.uk/web-developm......
I was offered the chance to review the 'Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter' book from Packt and in the interest of full disclosure I will make it clear that in exchange I would get the book credited to my online Packt account, but given the cost of this lightweight book, you will quickly see that the financial benefit was not a contributing factor for me to agree (Amazon list it for $6.22 = £4.10).
The timing couldn't have been more perfect, I am currently involved in a fairly large web project, written with BackboneJS, MarionetteJS and some Jquery plugins. For once I decided to write unit tests for my Javascript because my web site uses a significantly large and complicated Javascript API. For the unit tests I have been happily using QUnit and a Jquery AJAX mocking API to simulate server responses, releasing the burden of waiting for server features being available or fighting unpredictable data responses.
Another team member is writing the user interface components, integrating with my heavily unit tested API, so far, so good. This is where my interest in Selenium started, I knew that I really wanted to test the user interface, and whilst I could do this with QUnit by injecting views in to the DOM and then asserting that what was expected to be visible actually was, it didn't sound like the best way.
Selenium has two modes, a record and playback scripting mode (low overhead when starting automated ui testing) and an API that can be used to remotely control a browser, that's pretty much all I knew, then Packt called. So, given my knowledge and interest at that time, how did the book hold up?...
This is best judged by asking the question 'do I feel that I now know enough to really start using Selenium'? The answer is yes, the book contains the essentials to get you started (matching the title of the books promise), but leaves you wanting to know more, which I guess is exactly where the book should leave you.
After reading the book I know exactly how I can start using Selenium within my project to complement my unit tests with integration tests, absolutely critical for my regression testing, but I did takes some notes of bits that I didn't like or wasn't confident of the accuracy in the book, they are...
The structure of the book has a tendency to dip briefly into a subject and then not discuss it further, until much later in the book. I prefer new topics to be introduced and then go into the details 'there and then', otherwise I can't help but think 'aren't the going to discuss this in any more depth' causing me to get distracted whilst I continue to read about other subjects (I dont like contect switching) or skim through the book to check.
They mention that Selenium doesn't support Rich Internet Applications (RIA), giving the examples of “Silverlight, Flex/Flash, and JavaFx”, technically I consider these 'browser plugins' and therefore I would argue that it can support RIA, depending on your interpretation of what you consider 'Rich', to me a single paged web application with dynamic contents, paging without page reloads, HTML 5 charts etc are justifiably 'Rich' and supported.
Your told that "“For developing tests with Selenium WebDriver, you will need Eclipse IDE installed on the system”, however this is not true, you can develop with Java, c#, python, etc, so it's IDE agnostic.
There is a hint as to when you would use the selenium IDE versus the API, but I found myself wanting more of a guideline for when you would swap, however, I was unaware until reading the book that you could convert a recorded script in to API code (different bindings for different languages), as a result I am less concerned about this now.
The book is focused on using Eclipse and Maven, I don't mind that, but I would have valued a page explaining how you would get the API working using Ant and Netbeans (which can use Maven or Ant based projects).
The book introduced the concept of testing on various browsers, but didn't explain how you can automate the testing on multiple browsers, for example, the tests require a certain driver to be loaded before the tests execute, so perhaps you are supposed to have your build/test system set some environment properties to specify what driver to start the current test execution with and then enumerate through them one after the other at at Maven / Ant level.
There were a couple of places where I felt that a diagram would have added value.
So, those points above - as you can see are minor, my summary is that at £4.10 the book does provide you with the essentials to get started, probably within a lunch break or two, so it's good value and just enough to get you started, something that that title is accurate about.
You can find out more on the Packt site http://www.packtpub.com/selenium-test..., but if you have found this review useful, please click here http://link.packtpub.com/kOhrDq to increase my stats for how many people that I have driven to their site :-)
Rob
I was offered the chance to review the 'Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter' book from Packt and in the interest of full disclosure I will make it clear that in exchange I would get the book credited to my online Packt account, but given the cost of this lightweight book, you will quickly see that the financial benefit was not a contributing factor for me to agree (Amazon list it for $6.22 = £4.10).
The timing couldn't have been more perfect, I am currently involved in a fairly large web project, written with BackboneJS, MarionetteJS and some Jquery plugins. For once I decided to write unit tests for my Javascript because my web site uses a significantly large and complicated Javascript API. For the unit tests I have been happily using QUnit and a Jquery AJAX mocking API to simulate server responses, releasing the burden of waiting for server features being available or fighting unpredictable data responses.
Another team member is writing the user interface components, integrating with my heavily unit tested API, so far, so good. This is where my interest in Selenium started, I knew that I really wanted to test the user interface, and whilst I could do this with QUnit by injecting views in to the DOM and then asserting that what was expected to be visible actually was, it didn't sound like the best way.
Selenium has two modes, a record and playback scripting mode (low overhead when starting automated ui testing) and an API that can be used to remotely control a browser, that's pretty much all I knew, then Packt called. So, given my knowledge and interest at that time, how did the book hold up?...
This is best judged by asking the question 'do I feel that I now know enough to really start using Selenium'? The answer is yes, the book contains the essentials to get you started (matching the title of the books promise), but leaves you wanting to know more, which I guess is exactly where the book should leave you.
After reading the book I know exactly how I can start using Selenium within my project to complement my unit tests with integration tests, absolutely critical for my regression testing, but I did takes some notes of bits that I didn't like or wasn't confident of the accuracy in the book, they are...
The structure of the book has a tendency to dip briefly into a subject and then not discuss it further, until much later in the book. I prefer new topics to be introduced and then go into the details 'there and then', otherwise I can't help but think 'aren't the going to discuss this in any more depth' causing me to get distracted whilst I continue to read about other subjects (I dont like contect switching) or skim through the book to check.
They mention that Selenium doesn't support Rich Internet Applications (RIA), giving the examples of “Silverlight, Flex/Flash, and JavaFx”, technically I consider these 'browser plugins' and therefore I would argue that it can support RIA, depending on your interpretation of what you consider 'Rich', to me a single paged web application with dynamic contents, paging without page reloads, HTML 5 charts etc are justifiably 'Rich' and supported.
Your told that "“For developing tests with Selenium WebDriver, you will need Eclipse IDE installed on the system”, however this is not true, you can develop with Java, c#, python, etc, so it's IDE agnostic.
There is a hint as to when you would use the selenium IDE versus the API, but I found myself wanting more of a guideline for when you would swap, however, I was unaware until reading the book that you could convert a recorded script in to API code (different bindings for different languages), as a result I am less concerned about this now.
The book is focused on using Eclipse and Maven, I don't mind that, but I would have valued a page explaining how you would get the API working using Ant and Netbeans (which can use Maven or Ant based projects).
The book introduced the concept of testing on various browsers, but didn't explain how you can automate the testing on multiple browsers, for example, the tests require a certain driver to be loaded before the tests execute, so perhaps you are supposed to have your build/test system set some environment properties to specify what driver to start the current test execution with and then enumerate through them one after the other at at Maven / Ant level.
There were a couple of places where I felt that a diagram would have added value.
So, those points above - as you can see are minor, my summary is that at £4.10 the book does provide you with the essentials to get started, probably within a lunch break or two, so it's good value and just enough to get you started, something that that title is accurate about.
You can find out more on the Packt site http://www.packtpub.com/selenium-test..., but if you have found this review useful, please click here http://link.packtpub.com/kOhrDq to increase my stats for how many people that I have driven to their site :-)
Rob
January 27, 2014
In Detail
Selenium is a software testing framework for automating web applications for testing purposes. It uses components such as Selenium IDE, Selenium Client API, and Selenium Webdriver to test web applications, which provides an easy-to-use platform and lets you test your applications more effectively and efficiently.
"Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter" was born out of the need for a short, yet all-encompassing book that would give you a solid foundation in creating and running tests with Selenium testing tools. This book will enable you to harness the power of Selenium and put it to good use throughout the testing process, quickly and efficiently.
The "Instant Selenium Testing Tools Starter" can be used as an end-to-end guide or as a desk reference, with sections that deal with all the key aspects of automating tests for web applications. A step-by-step description of key features is provided with the help of simple and concise examples. Each chapter will help you understand the key features of Selenium with tips and tricks that will become the foundation of your knowledge in the future.
Approach
Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks.A quick starter for testing web applications easily and efficiently
Who this book is for
This book is intended for software quality assurance/testing professionals, and software developers who want to start using Selenium for testing web-based applications.
About the AuthorUnmesh Gundecha
Unmesh Gundecha has a Master's Degree in Software Engineering and around 10 years of experience in Software Development and Testing. Unmesh has architected functional test automation projects using industry standard, in-house and custom test automation frameworks along with leading commercial and open source test automation tools. Presently he is working as Test Architect with a multinational company in Pune, India.
He is also author of Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook published by Packt in November 2012.
June 26, 2013
As a trainer i suggest this book who wants to start career in selenium . Gives a very compact understanding about the tool and usage.
August 6, 2016
Quick overview of the Selenium capabilities (IDE and WebDriver) - more a kind of installation guide and "Hello World" type of book
September 22, 2014
This book is good for starter. It focus on Selenium IDE.
May 12, 2016
Way too basic (just installation instructions, terminology and really basic examples), limited to Java and outdated. Even for a "starter" book I would have expected quite more.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews