Building and maintaining automated tests has always been a challenge, especially when it comes to speed, coverage, and collaboration across technical and non-technical roles.

The release of Autonomous 2.2 helps teams reduce the time and effort needed to build and maintain reliable end-to-end tests. It combines LLM-generated test steps, automatic test data generation, built-in API validation, and visual comparisons across environments so that teams can find bugs earlier and release with more confidence.

API Step Builder: Visual API Testing, No Context Switching

Applitools Autonomous has always supported API testing, but with Autonomous 2.2, creating API tests is easier and more accessible than ever.

The new API Step Builder lets you build, run, debug, and update API calls with the UI, directly in your workflow—no code or external tools required.

• Paste in raw cURL or HTTP
• Translate into readable test steps
• Add headers, cookies, auth, body, and parameters visually
• Chain responses into UI steps via variables

Supported Features:

• Full HTTP method support: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, etc.
• Built-in request fields for headers, cookies, authorization, body, and URL params
• Dynamic variables: Ex. use {response.body.token} or {response.body.name} like variables in downstream steps
• Support for raw cURL or HTTP input with automatic translation to English-readable steps

Whether you’re preparing state, validating backend responses, or asserting API behavior, you can now do it all in one place—with a clean, intuitive UI that works just like the rest of Autonomous.

LLM Generated Test Steps: From Business Logic to Automation in Seconds

Write test steps the way you think—in plain English. With LLM Generated Test Steps, you can simply describe your business logic (e.g., “Select Ohio from the state dropdown menu”) and Autonomous will convert it into executable steps.

Let’s say you’re testing a job application page. Instead of clicking through each form field manually, you simply type:

Submit the form as an obscure Tolkien character

Autonomous analyzes the rendered page in real-time, understands the structure and semantics, and breaks down that one line into multiple actionable steps, such as:

• Typing the name and email address
• Selecting an appropriate option from dropdown menus
• Clicking the “Submit” button

The result? A complete, readable, and editable test created in seconds—no coding, no selectors, no extra UI to learn.

Perfect for:

• Speeding up test creation during sprints
• Empowering manual testers to create automated tests
• Eliminating writer’s block in test authoring

Join our Platform Pulse webinar on July 24 to see Autonomous 2.2 in action

Test Data Generation: Realistic Input with Zero Effort

Test coverage is only as good as the data behind it. Autonomous 2.2 introduces natural language–based test data generation that instantly produces realistic data at runtime, helping with edge case coverage and state variability.

Just say what you need:

Submit the form using random data for 90’s TV dads

Autonomous parses your request, uses LLMs to create diverse, high-quality data, and injects it directly into your test. Each run can generate fresh values—so no two executions are the same.

Cross-Environment Visual Comparisons: One Baseline, Many Environments

Ensuring parity across environments—staging vs. prod, dev vs. QA—or locales is critical. Parameterized visual baselines allow test engineers to define and run tests using variable data while still maintaining deterministic baseline comparison.

For example, you can run the same test in different plans—one with {env}=integration, another with {env}=staging—and compare visual differences across each environment without changing a single line of test logic.

• Parameters and datasets handled automatically
• Custom flows and URL List tests supported
• Visual baselines set per unique parameter set
• Abort prevention and value prompts to ensure test validity

Parameter handling is enforced at both test and plan levels—tests abort cleanly if required values are missing, ensuring reliable execution outcomes.

Tunneling Enhancements: Instant Feedback, Zero Guesswork

Tunneling just got easier and more reliable. With tunneling enhancements, Applitools Autonomous now includes improved diagnostics, real-time tunnel status, actionable error codes, and visibility for team admins—not just account owners

Users now get real-time diagnostics:

• Is the tunnel connected?
• Which hosts is it routing?
• Are there errors, and what do they mean?

Admins now get access to error codes, logs, host mapping, and verification checks—all without reaching out to support.

The Bottom Line

Applitools Autonomous 2.2 turns plain English into production-grade automation. Whether you’re testing UI, APIs, internal systems, or staging vs. production, it removes friction that slows QA teams down.

Explore the new features in the product documentation or dive into Autonomous with a free trial.

Quick Answers

The post Applitools Autonomous 2.2: AI-Driven Testing That Thinks Like You appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

TL;DR — Applitools brings visual, functional, and autonomous testing together in a single AI-powered platform. Backed by 11+ years of refinement and a dataset of 4 billion real-world images, our Visual AI delivers unmatched accuracy and reliability for enterprise-grade software testing.

Testing today isn’t just about coverage—it’s about confidence, speed, and scaling quality across teams. Whether you’re a developer chasing faster feedback, a QA lead reducing maintenance overhead, or a product owner focused on release velocity, Applitools helps modern teams deliver software that looks right, works right, and evolves with ease.

Here’s how Visual, Functional, and Autonomous Testing all come together in one powerful platform.

Trusted Visual AI with Proven Accuracy

Applitools sets the standard in Visual Testing. Our Visual AI engine delivers 99.9999% accuracy, eliminating false positives and catching bugs others miss.

• 5.8x more efficient than pixel-based tools
• Detect both functional and visual bugs in a single test
• Works with all major frameworks: Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, and more

We didn’t just add AI—we’ve spent 11+ years perfecting it.

A Complete Platform for End-to-End Testing

Applitools goes far beyond screenshots. Our Intelligent Testing Platform includes Autonomous Test Creation, Visual Validation, Cross-Browser + Device Testing, and Accessibility Testing—all in one cloud-based solution.

• Run tests across browsers, devices, and screen sizes in parallel
• Built-in accessibility and compliance testing
• Fully scalable with enterprise-grade performance

Less Test Maintenance with Self-Healing, Smart Grouping & Predictive Analytics

Spend less time fixing broken tests and more time delivering value. Applitools minimizes test upkeep so your team can focus on building.

• Self-healing locators reduce test flakiness and manual updates
• Root cause analysis, smart grouping, and predictive analytics streamline debugging
• Tests automatically adapt as your UI evolves—no babysitting required

Collaborative Testing: How Developers, PMs, Designers & Marketers All Work Smarter with Applitools

Testing shouldn’t be a bottleneck—or limited to just QA. Applitools empowers developers, designers, product managers, and even marketers to collaborate with ease.

• Intuitive UI for reviewing results and managing baselines
• Seamless sharing of results and issue tracking
• Codeless and code-based authoring, no deep technical expertise needed

More than a Decade of AI Leadership

AI isn’t new to us—it’s the foundation of our platform. Unlike newer tools making AI promises, we’ve been building, training, and refining Visual AI to solve real testing challenges at scale for more than a decade.

• Mature, battle-tested AI that improves with scale
• Trusted by engineering teams at Microsoft, Tesla, Salesforce, eBay, and 400+ more
• Over 1 billion visual tests run with our platform

Seamless Integrations & Dev Experience

Great testing fits into your workflow—not the other way around. Our AI-powered test automation works with your tools, languages, and CI/CD pipelines to scale quality without slowing you down. Applitools integrates with:

• Every major framework: Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer, WebdriverIO
• CI/CD tools: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab, Azure DevOps
• SDKs for Java, JavaScript, Python, C#, and more

Whether you’re in code or no-code workflows, we plug into your stack and scale with you.

24/7 Support That Doesn’t Disappear

Whether you’re mid-sprint or troubleshooting a release, help is always within reach. Get expert guidance anytime—no hoops, no waiting.

• Around-the-clock global technical support
• Extensive documentation, how-tos, and real-time guidance
• Active community forum and dedicated Customer Success Managers (not just for enterprise)

Compare that to competitors with limited support, slow response times, or no dedicated resources unless you’re a top-tier customer.

Smart Investment, Real Value

Our pricing is flexible, predictable, and scales with your needs. You’ll see ROI fast:

• Save hours of test maintenance per sprint
• Eliminate manual bug hunts and false positives
• Deliver faster releases without compromising quality

Explore our current pricing structure, or speak with a testing specialist to build a package that’s right for your team.

“We reduced our testing time from days to hours. Applitools changed how we think about QA.”
— QA Lead, Global Retail Brand

Visual, Functional, and Autonomous Testing—The Applitools Advantage

We combine Visual AI, Autonomous Testing, and a developer-friendly platform into one powerful, scalable solution. With Applitools, your team gets:

• Smarter test creation
• Less maintenance
• Better collaboration
• Faster releases
• And trusted results every time

See What’s New with Applitools Autonomous and What’s Coming with Applitools Eyes

Ready to Test Smarter?

In a crowded automation landscape, it’s not enough to have “AI-powered” features. You need real results. With over a billion visual tests run and trusted by leading enterprises across industries, Applitools isn’t experimenting with AI—it’s already delivering.

Whether you’re starting fresh or looking to scale smarter, Applitools gives your team the tools to automate with confidence and speed.

Ready to see it in action? Start your free trial, book a personalized demo, or explore the platform today.

Applitools helps you test like it’s 2025. Join the world’s top teams already doing it.

The post Visual, Functional, and Autonomous Testing—All in One appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

Testing modern software applications is becoming increasingly complex. With dynamic interfaces, personalized user experiences, and rapid deployment cycles, software engineering and QA leaders need efficient solutions that keep pace with development demands. While traditional test automation struggles to provide sufficient coverage and reliability, Applitools Autonomous emerges as a powerful, scalable solution that leverages no-code testing to achieve end-to-end testing workflows.

In this post, we’ll explore how integrating no-code and AI-driven end-to-end testing can solve common challenges, streamline processes, and empower QA teams to deliver high-quality applications faster.

The Problem with Traditional Testing

Many QA teams continue to rely on outdated methods that make it difficult to scale. Here are some key issues with conventional test automation approaches:

• Limited Test Coverage
  Traditional testing tools often fail to provide complete coverage. Most teams automate less than 20% of test cases, leaving large portions of applications vulnerable to defects.
• High Maintenance Overhead
  Scripts break with even minor UI updates, requiring significant manual effort to fix.
• False Positives
  Conventional pixel-based validation frequently flags irrelevant discrepancies, leading to wasted time and effort.

These limitations slow development cycles and increase costs—making it difficult to deliver the seamless, trustworthy experiences users expect.

The Promise of No-Code End-to-End Testing

Applitools Autonomous offers a fresh approach by combining no-code capabilities with AI-powered automation. This allows teams of all skill levels to create and maintain end-to-end tests with minimal effort while achieving broader test coverage and better accuracy.

Key Benefits of No-Code End-to-End Testing

• Simplified Test Creation: With no-code functionality, creating tests doesn’t require advanced coding skills. The Autonomous platform allows teams to write test flows in plain English or with an interactive browser, simplifying test authoring for non-technical users and engineers alike. A simple command like “Click the Login button” is all it takes to generate testing steps. 

• Effortless Scalability: Scalable end-to-end testing is easy with the Autonomous platform. Whether you’re testing small applications or large enterprise systems, the tool adjusts to your needs while maintaining consistency across devices, browsers, and resolutions.
• Self-Maintaining Tests: Tests created with Autonomous adapt automatically to UI changes, drastically minimizing maintenance. This ensures QA efforts remain efficient, even as your application evolves.
• AI-Driven Visual Validation: Applitools’ industry-leading Visual AI offers powerful visual testing capabilities. It intelligently identifies functional and visual changes in an application’s UI, avoiding false positives and ensuring a seamless user experience.
• Seamless Integration: Fully cloud-based and compatible with existing workflows, the Autonomous platform requires no local installations or complex configurations.
• API Testing Made Simple: For teams that need to validate backend and API responses alongside front-end testing, the Autonomous platform integrates API testing seamlessly into end-to-end workflows. 

Functional Testing in Action

The Autonomous platform simplifies every aspect of end-to-end testing. Testers can automate complex processes in minutes. For example, to validate workflows like contact forms or checkout processes, users can author functional tests in plain English (or even another language)—no coding required. This feature ensures testing of every critical business flow with precision. 

Why No-Code End-to-End Testing is a Game Changer

With built-in support for API testing, data-driven tests, and advanced visual validation, the platform ensures QA teams have everything they need to run comprehensive, scalable end-to-end tests. And by eliminating barriers to automation, the no-code approach lets QA teams focus on what truly matters—improving application quality and delivering a superior customer experience.

Major enterprises using Applitools’ Autonomous platform have already seen measurable benefits:

• Five-fold Increase in Test Coverage—extending seamless automation across devices and browsers.
• 35% More Defects Detected Early—preventing costly errors from reaching production.
• Hundreds of Hours Saved Per Release—thanks to minimized test maintenance and faster execution.

These results highlight the efficiency and precision that no-code end-to-end testing can bring to development cycles.

Unlock the Full Potential of End-to-End Testing

Applitools Autonomous is redefining how QA teams approach application testing. By combining no-code capabilities with advanced AI technologies, it offers a complete solution for comprehensive end-to-end testing across modern software applications.

Get a Closer Look

If you’re interested in seeing more, the full webinar is available on-demand and dives deeper into real-world use cases. Additionally, you can explore the platform firsthand with a free 14-day trial that allows you to test all the features on your own projects, giving your team the opportunity to experience the efficiency and accuracy it brings to end-to-end testing. Sign up for your free trial now.

The post No-Code End-to-End Testing with Applitools Autonomous appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

Efficient software testing plays a crucial role in the digital financial industry, where customer trust relies on reliable systems and smooth user experiences. AI-powered tools are revolutionizing software testing for online banking. Learn how Applitools’ Autonomous Testing Platform, an AI-driven testing solution, can boost efficiency and ensure seamless functionality for digital banking platforms.

AI-Powered Testing for Visual Verification

Modern interfaces are becoming more dynamic, making software testing more challenging than ever. Applitools uses AI-powered end-to-end testing to deliver accurate, human-like visual validation. With this advanced approach, teams can easily detect visual bugs, handle dynamic content, and solve multi-device rendering issues. Compared to traditional testing tools, Applitools’ AI testing solution offers a faster, more reliable way to ensure seamless user experiences across all platforms.

Visual AI “sees” applications as a human would, identifying not just design inconsistencies, but functional issues within complex environments. This human-eye accuracy is especially critical for financial applications, where misdisplayed data or minor UI errors can compromise user trust.

Visual Verification with AI gives QA teams:

• Precise identification of visual bugs, such as misaligned content or missing elements.
• Compatibility across a range of devices, screen sizes, and browsers.
• Reduced false positives, ensuring only actionable defects are flagged.

Challenges in Automated Testing for Financial Apps

Some of the key challenges QA teams face in the financial services industry include testing data-heavy dashboards, personalized user experiences, and meeting strict compliance requirements. QA teams also navigate the complexity of testing constantly changing data, such as account balances and transactions, while ensuring seamless functionality across multiple devices and screen sizes. These unique testing challenges highlight the importance of effective QA processes in delivering reliable, user-friendly financial services.

Adding to these complexities are regulatory requirements, like accessibility compliance mandated by guidelines such as the European Accessibility Act. Traditional tools often fall short in dynamically adapting to such changes, leading to increased bottlenecks.

Common Obstacles Faced by QA Teams:

• Exponential growth in test scenarios due to dynamic UI states.
• Maintaining coverage amid rapid deployment cycles.
• Lacking tools to validate compliance and localization needs.

The Role of Visual AI and Autonomous in Testing

Applitools’ Visual AI is transforming the way teams approach UI testing. Developed with 11 years of research and development, this powerful technology compares both visual elements and DOM structure to deliver comprehensive UI validation. Key features like automated baselining and self-healing tests make maintaining tests easier, especially during frequent code updates or UI changes.

The Autonomous platform takes Visual AI testing to the next level by integrating it with end-to-end test workflows. The platform simplifies visual, functional, API, and accessibility testing. With Autonomous, teams can automate testing, schedule tests, validate results, and efficiently manage issues—all from a user-friendly interface.

Features of Visual AI & Testing with Autonomous:

• Self-healing capabilities to adapt tests to UI updates without manual adjustments.
• Natural language authoring that allows easy collaboration between technical and non-technical team members.
• Supports functional flows like login processes while ensuring personalized data fields meet validation patterns.

Efficiency and Coverage Improvements

A top US bank improved testing efficacy using Applitools Autonomous. By adopting Visual AI and scaling to test its entire ecosystem, the bank achieved:

• 5x Test Coverage Expansion across all devices and browsers.
• 35% More Defects Caught weekly within earlier production stages.
• Up to 999 Hours Saved Per Release by reducing manual test generation and maintenance efforts.

This expansive coverage allowed the team to uncover bugs that would otherwise have been missed, delivering higher-quality software quicker.

Visit the event archive to see more of the case study and watch the full session on-demand.

Security and Integration Features

Data security and adaptiveness in distinct environments are primary concerns in financial testing. The webinar addressed how Applitools ensures client protection with private cloud implementations and a secure architecture for test data management. The platform seamlessly integrates with firewalls and various development ecosystems, making it an ideal choice regardless of organizational infrastructure.

Ensuring Data Privacy and Flexibility:

• Test data secured using encryption and private cloud options.
• Compatible with diverse environments, both behind firewalls and in SaaS architectures.
• Allows scalability without compromising compliance adherence.

Strengthen Financial Application Testing

AI-assisted testing is helping overcome the hurdles posed by traditional testing. By integrating Visual AI with a broad end-to-end testing workflow, financial institutions can drastically enhance their QA practices. More importantly, these improvements do not require trade-offs between coverage, speed, and accuracy.

If you’re ready to elevate your testing game, particularly in high-demand sectors like online banking, platforms like Autonomous present an opportunity you can’t afford to miss.

Explore the full webinar on-demand or reach out to learn how Applitools Autonomous can streamline your QA efforts and ensure the flawless delivery of digital experiences.

The post End-to-End Testing Solutions for Online Banking Software Applications appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

Modern ecommerce applications are more than digital storefronts. They’re immersive, complex experiences designed to captivate and engage customers—customers that spent well over $1 trillion in 2024 (over $220 billion during seasonal shopping surges).

Ecommerce applications are now multifaceted ecosystems that require high reliability, fast updates, and seamless performance across devices. With features like multi-step checkout, dynamic promotions, and personalized recommendations, these applications present a unique challenge for testing teams: ensuring consistent quality in an environment of constant change.

From adaptive content testing to streamlined cross-platform validations, AI-powered testing helps software test and development teams deliver personalized, high-quality experiences to their shoppers.

Step 1: Addressing the Core Challenges in Ecommerce Application Testing

To understand how AI-powered testing can enhance quality, we first need to think about the primary complexities in ecommerce applications:

• Dynamic Content
  Promotions, recommendations, and A/B testing create a dynamic landscape where content changes rapidly, which can lead to issues in test reliability.
• Multifaceted User Journeys
  A typical user flow can include browsing, filtering products, adding items to a cart, and various checkout steps, each with variations like promotional codes and payment methods.
• Cross-Platform Consistency
  Ensuring a consistent experience across mobile, desktop, and tablet adds another layer of complexity, requiring cross-device and cross-browser validations to prevent regressions. 

These challenges make e-commerce application testing labor-intensive, especially for teams relying on traditional methods–manual or automated.

Step 2: Leveraging AI to Manage Complexity in Ecommerce Testing

Let’s explore how AI-powered testing can help address the common pain points of ecommerce application testing:

Autonomous Testing for Comprehensive Flow Coverage

Autonomous testing provides broad page coverage by automatically creating visual tests for each page from a single URL. For more complex, critical user journeys, custom flow tests blend human oversight with AI assistance to ensure thorough validation.

AI tools, like Applitools Autonomous, can learn the structure of complex user journeys—like multi-step checkouts or specific promo code applications—and adapt to new scenarios with minimal manual intervention. For developers, this means reduced time writing scripts and a faster feedback loop, as the AI detects critical paths and validates user interactions autonomously.

Test Tip: Use autonomous testing to cover frequently changing paths like checkout, where many variations (promo codes, payment methods) need to be validated with each update.

Visual AI for Dynamic Content Testing

AI-powered visual testing focuses on meaningful changes, helping to identify only the differences that impact user experience. Traditional test automation often flags minor layout shifts that don’t affect usability, leading to unnecessary noise. On the other hand, Visual AI detects layout issues that matter, minimizing false positives and simplifying testing for high-variance content.

Use Cases: Visual AI is particularly effective in handling promotional banners, personalized ads, and product recommendations. It ensures that these elements render correctly without producing redundant alerts.

Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing

Ensuring consistency across devices and browsers is crucial in ecommerce. Testing with a tool, teams can validate both functionality and appearance across multiple environments in parallel, enabling broader test coverage with significantly reduced runtime.

Tool Tip: For each release, use the Ultrafast Grid to run tests across all targeted browsers and devices simultaneously. By testing in parallel, you can catch visual and functional discrepancies early, ensuring consistent experiences across your audience’s preferred devices.

AI for Personalized and Edge Case Testing

AI-powered testing can adapt to personalized and localized content variations. This allows you to verify account-based and user-specific scenarios, like tailored recommendations, language translation, and geolocation-based offers. The AI dynamically generates test scenarios for real-world edge cases, validating content presentation, accuracy, and functionality across users.

A/B Testing and Experimentation

AI testing tools can run tests alongside A/B experiments to quickly validate different scenarios and identify potential issues without extensive setup or downtime. Integrated into CI/CD pipelines, AI can seamlessly support experimentation, allowing you to test new features or changes with agility.

Test Tip: Use AI for A/B testing by validating that both variations display correctly and function as expected. This can streamline experiment verification and minimize risk.

Accessibility Compliance with AI

Accessibility is key to ensuring inclusivity for all of your shoppers when you consider that 4.4% of the world’s population is colorblind. Even more shoppers have contrast sensitivity issues (we don’t know about you but some of us are just getting old). AI-driven testing identifies accessibility issues early, such as missing alt text, improper color contrast, and navigation difficulties. With accessibility testing integrated into automated pipelines, developers can confidently meet compliance requirements while optimizing the experience for users with disabilities.

Step 3: Applying AI Testing in Real-World Ecommerce Scenarios

Ensuring that every scenario receives accurate validation across all paths and user types can be hard but your team can quickly improve test coverage by integrating AI into the below scenarios:

• Multi-Path Checkout Testing
  AI testing tools validate complex checkout flows, including various payment methods, promo codes, and cart adjustments. This reduces the risk of abandoned carts due to broken checkout paths and ensures seamless user experiences.
• Product Filtering and Sorting
  Filtering and sorting are essential for user navigation. AI testing validates the functionality and accuracy of filters by testing different combinations. This ensures the results match user criteria and display correctly.
• Personalized Content Validation
  Personalized recommendations, banners, and product listings are critical for user engagement. AI-powered testing verifies that these elements display correctly based on user data, ensuring consistency without disrupting the layout.

Step 4: Getting Started with AI-Powered Testing

To maximize the benefits of AI in ecommerce application testing, you can follow these best practices:

• Integrate AI into your CI/CD Pipeline
  Embedding AI testing into the CI/CD process ensures that every change undergoes rigorous testing before reaching production. This allows for fast iteration and high-quality releases.
• Prioritize Dynamic and High-Risk Areas
  Focus AI testing on paths that involve dynamic content, personalized features, and checkout flows. These areas tend to have the highest variance and the most critical impact on user experience.
• Leverage Parallel Testing
  Run cross-platform tests in parallel to streamline testing cycles and get immediate insights into how changes impact various devices and browsers.
• Use AI for Regression and Smoke Tests
  Routine regression and smoke testing can become resource-intensive. By automating these with AI, you free up resources for more complex testing, ensuring each release is stable.

To Wrap Up…

As AI becomes an integral part of the testing process you can shift your focus toward building new features and enhancing shopper experiences by maintaining a high standard of quality:

• Reduced Manual Work and Faster Releases
  By automating repetitive tasks and handling edge cases, AI-powered testing allows QA teams to focus on high-impact scenarios, reducing time to market.
• Increased Test Coverage and Accuracy
  AI’s ability to adapt to dynamic content and complex scenarios broadens test coverage and increases the accuracy of results, ultimately reducing production issues.
• Adaptability to Ongoing Changes
  AI-powered testing lets ecommerce sites handle constant updates and seasonal changes without extensive reconfiguration so that shoppers have a seamless experience.

AI-powered testing is now an essential strategy for ecommerce test and dev teams to meet user expectations and stay competitive. You can try out these strategic steps with a free trial of Applitools Autonomous.

The post A Guide to AI-Powered Ecommerce Application Testing appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

In Unlock Efficient End-to-End Testing in Cypress, Dave Piacente and Justin Ison presented a sneak peek of a new tool that records user actions and generates automated test code using Cypress. It aims to save development time, empower non-developers to create test scripts, and improve test reliability and maintainability. The tool also includes features like self-healing and context awareness. The webinar addressed various questions from the audience regarding the tool’s functionality and compatibility with different frameworks and scenarios. Here’s a look at the key insights.

Time-Savings: Streamlining Test Case Generation

One of the most compelling advantages of the Record and Generate tool is its ability to drastically reduce the time required to create test cases. By recording user actions, this tool eliminates the need for manual coding at each step. This feature not only speeds up the test case creation process but also reduces the potential for human error, ensuring greater consistency and reliability.

Key Benefits:

• Quick Test Case Generation: The tool captures user actions in real-time, transforming them into test scripts instantly.
• Elimination of Manual Coding: By automating the script-writing process, it frees up valuable time for developers and quality assurance professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.

Self-Healing and Robust Tests

Ensuring that automated tests are robust and maintainable over time is a common challenge in test automation. The Record and Generate tool addresses this issue by incorporating self-healing capabilities that enhance the resilience of test scripts. This functionality automates repetitive tasks, such as form filling, and improves the overall quality of the generated code.

Key Benefits:

• Enhanced Test Maintenance: The tool’s self-healing feature automatically adjusts test scripts to accommodate changes in the application’s UI.
• Improved Code Quality: Automated handling of mundane tasks ensures that the generated code meets high standards, comparable to scripts written by experienced practitioners.

Modern Test Coverage with Cypress

The webinar highlighted how the Record and Generate tool facilitates the creation of modern test coverage using Cypress, a leading test automation framework. By embedding industry best practices, the tool allows for seamless migration from other test frameworks like Selenium to Cypress, ensuring that teams can adopt the latest technologies without a steep learning curve.

Key Benefits:

• Efficient Migration: The tool simplifies the transition from existing test implementations to Cypress, making it easier for teams to adopt modern testing practices.
• Industry Best Practices: By following established standards, the tool ensures that the generated test scripts are robust and maintainable.

Empowering Non-Developers in Test Automation

A significant innovation of the Record and Generate tool is its ability to involve non-technical team members in the test creation process. This democratization of test automation enables a more diverse range of team members to contribute, distributing the workload and fostering greater collaboration.

Key Benefits:

• Distributed Workload: By empowering non-developers to create test scripts, the tool helps balance the test creation workload across the team.
• Increased Collaboration: Involving a broader range of team members in the test automation process fosters a more collaborative and inclusive work environment.

During the webinar, Dave and Justin discussed the potential expansion of the tool to support other frameworks and tools, such as Playwright and Selenium. This would enable users to leverage the benefits across different languages and testing frameworks, further enhancing its value and applicability in the industry.

With its AI capabilities and flexibility, this new tool offers a promising solution for organizations looking to streamline their testing efforts. Stay tuned for updates on availability, and watch the full webinar here.

Key Takeaways from Unlock Efficient E2E Testing in Cypress

1. Time Efficiency: The Record and Generate tool significantly reduces the time required for test case generation by automating the recording of user actions.
2. Robustness and Maintenance: The self-healing capabilities of the tool ensure that test scripts remain robust and maintainable over time.
3. Modernization: With built-in support for Cypress, the tool facilitates the adoption of modern test practices and seamless migration from older frameworks.
4. Inclusivity: By enabling non-developers to contribute to test automation, the tool promotes a more inclusive and collaborative approach to software testing.
5. Where to run your tests: Record and Generate tools like our Cypress code exporter don’t care where you run your tests. If you have an existing infrastructure, then you’re good to go. But if you happen to be in need of a solution then be sure to watch Streamlining Your Tech Stack for info on how to stand up a scalable/easy to manage DIY grid for Cypress (and other test frameworks).

Watch Unlock Efficient E2E Testing in Cypress Now On-Demand

The post Recap: Unlock Efficient E2E Testing in Cypress appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

We have a lot of great webinars and virtual events here at Applitools. I’m hoping posts like this give you a high-level summary of the key points with plenty of room for you to form your own impressions.

Dave Piacente

Curious if the software robots are here to take our jobs? Or maybe you’re not a fan of the AI hype train? During a recent session, The Future of AI-Based Test Automation, CTO Adam Carmi discussed—in practical terms—the current and future state of AI-based test automation, why it matters, and what you can do today to level up your automation practice.

• He describes how AI can be used to overcome common everyday challenges in end-to-end test automation, how the need for skilled testers will only increase, and how AI-based tooling can help supercharge any automated testing practice.
• He also puts his money where his mouth is by demonstrating how the neverending maintenance overhead of tests can be mitigated using AI-driven tooling which already exists today using concrete examples (e.g., visual validation and self-healing locators).
• He also discusses the role that AI will play in the future, including the development of autonomous testing platforms. These platforms will be able to automatically explore applications, add validations, and fill gaps in test coverage. (Spoiler alert: Applitools is building one, and Adam shows a bit of a teaser for it using a real-time in-browser REPL to automate the browser which uses natural language similar to ChatGPT.)

You can watch the full recording and find the session materials here, and I’ve included a quick breakdown with timestamps for ease of reference.

• Challenges with automating end-to-end tests using traditional approaches (02:34-10:22)
• How AI can be used to overcome these challenges (10:23-44:56)
• The role of AI in the future of test automation (e.g., autonomous testing) (44:57-58:56)
• The role of testers in the future (58:57-1:01:47)
• Q&A session with the speaker (1:01:48-1:12:30)

Want to see more? Don’t miss Future of Testing: AI in Automation.

The post AI and The Future of Test Automation with Adam Carmi | A Dave-reloper’s Take appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

Today’s software applications are getting more complicated, thus every testing team needs to focus on expanding test coverage. To achieve this goal, it is important to use a combination of testing types, such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and end-to-end testing, depending on the software application’s complexity and requirements.

End-to-End (E2E) testing is designed to ensure that all components of a software application are working together correctly and that the system as a whole meets the desired functionality, performance, and reliability requirements.

Cypress is a popular open-source end-to-end testing framework for web applications. It is designed to make the testing process easier and more efficient for developers. One of the unique features of Cypress is that it runs the tests within the browser, which means that it can provide better control and visibility over the application under test.
In this blog on End to End testing, we will deep dive into performing Cypress End to End testing on a local Cypress grid and will explain how to start automating visual tests with Applitools Eyes and the Ultrafast Grid using Cypress in JavaScript.

What is End to End Testing?

End-to-end (E2E) testing is a software testing strategy that verifies an application’s complete flow from beginning to end. It is a type of functional testing that tests the application’s behavior as a complete system, rather than testing individual components in isolation.

E2E testing simulates a real user scenario and covers all aspects of the application, including user interfaces, APIs, databases, and other integrations. It typically involves testing multiple components of an application to ensure that they work together as expected and fulfill the requirements of the business or end-users.

E2E testing is typically performed after other types of testing, such as unit testing and integration testing, have been completed. It is used to validate that the entire system works together seamlessly and to identify any issues that may have been missed in earlier stages of testing.

Why is end-to-end testing necessary?

End-to-end testing (E2E testing) is a type of software testing that tests the entire system or application from start to finish, simulating real-world user scenarios.

Unit testing alone is not enough to ensure the quality and reliability of software. While unit testing is an important part of the testing process, it only verifies the behavior of individual components or modules of the software in isolation. It does not guarantee that the software will work correctly when integrated with other components or modules.

This is where integration testing enters into the picture. Integration testing focuses on testing the interaction between two or more components of a system, to ensure that they work together correctly. However, even if all the individual components pass integration testing, there may still be issues with the overall system when all the components are put together. This is where end-to-end testing comes in – it tests the entire system from start to finish.

Cypress is a popular automation testing framework that is designed specifically for end-to-end testing. It runs tests directly in the browser, allowing it to provide an experience that is similar to how users interact with the application. This makes it easier to identify any issues that users might face, as the testing environment is as close to the real-world experience as possible.

To understand End to End testing, Let’s take a closer look at Mike Cohn’s test automation pyramid. We routinely do each level of testing listed in this pyramid while running automated Cypress testing.

Testing Pyramid Layers

The automation pyramid is a popular framework introduced by Mike Cohn that helps teams to plan and prioritize their testing efforts. It includes three levels of testing, which are:

1. Unit Tests: At the base of the pyramid are the unit tests, which test individual code components such as functions, methods, and classes. Unit tests are typically written by developers and are executed frequently during the development cycle. They are essential in ensuring that individual components of the application work as expected and can catch issues early in the development process.

2. Integration Tests: The middle layer of the pyramid consists of integration tests, which test how different components of the system work together. Integration tests ensure that the various parts of the application can communicate and interact with each other seamlessly. These tests are typically automated and are executed after the unit tests have passed.

3. End-to-End Tests: The top layer of the pyramid is end-to-end testing, which tests the entire application workflow from start to finish. These tests simulate real user scenarios and help ensure that the application functions as expected in a production environment. End-to-end tests are typically automated and are executed less frequently than the lower level tests.

Benefits of End-to-End Testing

There are several benefits of End to End testing. Some of the benefits of E2E testing include:

1. Increased Confidence: E2E testing provides a higher level of confidence in the software application by testing all components together. This testing approach ensures that all the components are integrated correctly and are working as expected.
2. Improved Quality: By testing the application from end-to-end, helps to identify and fix bugs earlier in the development process. This enhances the overall quality of the software.
3. Enhanced User Experience: E2E testing ensures that the application is working as expected for the end user. This helps to provide a better user experience and can lead to increased customer satisfaction.
4. Time and Cost Savings: E2E testing helps to identify issues early in the development cycle, which can save time and money by reducing the need for costly rework later in the process.
5. Better Collaboration: E2E testing promotes better collaboration between different teams working on the same application. This testing approach helps to identify issues that may be caused by a lack of communication between teams.
6. Increased Productivity: By automating the testing process, E2E testing can help to increase productivity by reducing the time and effort required to manually test the application.

Faster Time-to-Market: By catching defects earlier in the development process, end-to-end testing can help to reduce delays and accelerate the time-to-market of the application.

Frameworks for End to End testing

There are several popular frameworks for end-to-end testing, including:

Cypress

Cypress is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework that provides a simple and intuitive API for testing web applications. Cypress supports modern web development technologies like React, Angular, Vue.js, and more. It provides a built-in test runner, and it runs tests in the browser, which makes it fast and reliable.

Cypress runs tests inside the browser; it also provides detailed information about what’s happening at every step of the test, including network requests, console output, and DOM changes. This makes it easier to identify and troubleshoot issues and helps ensure that the application is working as intended.

Cypress Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Cypress GitHub repository:

• Stars: 43.3k
• Forks: 2.8k
• Used By: 797k
• Releases: 303
• Contributors: 427

WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO is a popular open-source testing framework for Node.js that allows developers to automate web applications in a simple and efficient way. It uses the WebDriver API to communicate with browsers and supports a variety of testing frameworks, including Mocha, Jasmine, and Cucumber.

.WebdriverIO Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of WebdriverIO GitHub repository:

• Stars: 8.1k
• Forks: 2.3k
• Used By: 50.5k
• Releases: 305
• Contributors: 491

Nightwatch.js

Nightwatch.js is an open-source Node.js-based end-to-end testing framework used to automate browser testing. It provides a simple and easy-to-use syntax for writing automated tests in JavaScript and allows you to run tests in real web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Nightwatch.js uses the WebDriver protocol to communicate with the browser and control its behavior. It also includes a powerful built-in assertion library that makes it easy to write test assertions and helps you quickly identify issues with your web application.

Nightwatch.js Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Nightwatch.js GitHub repository:

• Stars: 11.4k
• Forks: 1.1k
• Used By: 142k
• Releases: 219
• Contributors: 112

Protractor

Protractor is an open-source end-to-end testing framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. It is built on top of WebDriverJS and uses Jasmine syntax for writing test scripts. Protractor is designed to simulate user interactions with the application and to verify that the application behaves as expected.

Protractor Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Protractor GitHub repository:

• Stars: 8.8k
• Forks: 2.4k
• Used By: 1.9m
• Contributors: 250

TestCafe

TestCafe is an open-source end-to-end testing framework that allows you to automate web testing without using browser plugins. TestCafe is built on top of Node.js and provides a simple and powerful API for testing web applications.

TestCafe Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of TestCafe GitHub repository:

• Stars: 9.6k
• Forks: 677
• Used By: 12.3k
• Releases: 390
• Contributors: 117

Benefits End to End Testing Using Cypress

Here are some of the features of Cypress End to End testing:

1. Easy Setup: Cypress has a simple setup process that doesn’t require any additional drivers or libraries. You can get started with Cypress by installing a single package.
2. Automatic Waiting: Cypress automatically waits for elements to appear and become intractable before executing commands. This ensures that the tests are not affected by the timing of the application’s response.
3. Real-time Reloads: Cypress provides real-time reloads, which means that as you make changes to your code or tests, the application will automatically reload, and the tests will be re-run.
4. Interactive Debugging: Cypress provides an interactive test runner, which allows you to debug your tests by stepping through them, setting breakpoints, and viewing the application’s state at any point in time.
5. Time Travel: Cypress allows you to go back and forth in time to see what happened during the execution of a test. This feature is useful for debugging and understanding the behavior of your application.
6. Cross-browser Testing: Cypress allows you to run your tests on multiple browsers and viewports simultaneously. This helps you ensure that your application works correctly across different environments.
7. Network Traffic Control: Cypress allows you to control the network traffic of your application. You can stub, spy, and mock network requests to simulate different scenarios.
8. Automatic screenshots and videos: Cypress automatically takes screenshots and records videos of your tests, which makes it easy to see what went wrong when a test fails.

Frameworks for End to End testing

There are several popular frameworks for end-to-end testing, including:

Cypress

Cypress is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework that provides a simple and intuitive API for testing web applications. Cypress supports modern web development technologies like React, Angular, Vue.js, and more. It provides a built-in test runner, and it runs tests in the browser, which makes it fast and reliable.

Cypress runs tests inside the browser; it also provides detailed information about what’s happening at every step of the test, including network requests, console output, and DOM changes. This makes it easier to identify and troubleshoot issues and helps ensure that the application is working as intended.

Cypress Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Cypress GitHub repository:

• Stars: 43.3k
• Forks: 2.8k
• Used By: 797k
• Releases: 303
• Contributors: 427

WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO is a popular open-source testing framework for Node.js that allows developers to automate web applications in a simple and efficient way. It uses the WebDriver API to communicate with browsers and supports a variety of testing frameworks, including Mocha, Jasmine, and Cucumber.

.WebdriverIO Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of WebdriverIO GitHub repository:

• Stars: 8.1k
• Forks: 2.3k
• Used By: 50.5k
• Releases: 305
• Contributors: 491

Nightwatch.js

Nightwatch.js is an open-source Node.js-based end-to-end testing framework used to automate browser testing. It provides a simple and easy-to-use syntax for writing automated tests in JavaScript and allows you to run tests in real web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Nightwatch.js uses the WebDriver protocol to communicate with the browser and control its behavior. It also includes a powerful built-in assertion library that makes it easy to write test assertions and helps you quickly identify issues with your web application.

Nightwatch.js Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Nightwatch.js GitHub repository:

• Stars: 11.4k
• Forks: 1.1k
• Used By: 142k
• Releases: 219
• Contributors: 112

Protractor

Protractor is an open-source end-to-end testing framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. It is built on top of WebDriverJS and uses Jasmine syntax for writing test scripts. Protractor is designed to simulate user interactions with the application and to verify that the application behaves as expected.

Protractor Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of Protractor GitHub repository:

• Stars: 8.8k
• Forks: 2.4k
• Used By: 1.9m
• Contributors: 250

TestCafe

TestCafe is an open-source end-to-end testing framework that allows you to automate web testing without using browser plugins. TestCafe is built on top of Node.js and provides a simple and powerful API for testing web applications.

TestCafe Trends on GitHub

The following information is taken from the official website of TestCafe GitHub repository:

• Stars: 9.6k
• Forks: 677
• Used By: 12.3k
• Releases: 390
• Contributors: 117

Benefits End to End Testing Using Cypress

Here are some of the features of Cypress End to End testing:

1. Easy Setup: Cypress has a simple setup process that doesn’t require any additional drivers or libraries. You can get started with Cypress by installing a single package.
2. Automatic Waiting: Cypress automatically waits for elements to appear and become intractable before executing commands. This ensures that the tests are not affected by the timing of the application’s response.
3. Real-time Reloads: Cypress provides real-time reloads, which means that as you make changes to your code or tests, the application will automatically reload, and the tests will be re-run.
4. Interactive Debugging: Cypress provides an interactive test runner, which allows you to debug your tests by stepping through them, setting breakpoints, and viewing the application’s state at any point in time.
5. Time Travel: Cypress allows you to go back and forth in time to see what happened during the execution of a test. This feature is useful for debugging and understanding the behavior of your application.
6. Cross-browser Testing: Cypress allows you to run your tests on multiple browsers and viewports simultaneously. This helps you ensure that your application works correctly across different environments.
7. Network Traffic Control: Cypress allows you to control the network traffic of your application. You can stub, spy, and mock network requests to simulate different scenarios.
8. Automatic screenshots and videos: Cypress automatically takes screenshots and records videos of your tests, which makes it easy to see what went wrong when a test fails.

Set up Cypress For End to End Testing

To create a new project for Cypress automated testing, follow the steps listed below.

Step 1: Generate package.json.

• Create a project, let’s name it as cypress_applitools
• Use the npm init command to create a package.json file

Step 2: Install Cypress.

Install Cypress by running the command in the newly created folder:

npm install cypress –save-dev

OR

yarn add cypress –dev

Above command will install Cypress locally as a dev dependency for your project.

As shown below, Cypress version 12.11.0 is reflected after installation. The newest Cypress version at the time this blog was being written was 12.11.0.

Below is a diagram of Cypress’s default folder layout. The “e2e” folder is where test cases can be created.

About Project structure of Cypress

Cypress has built a default folder hierarchy when it opens for the first time, as can be seen in the screenshots. Each of these files and folders that Cypress created is described in detail below.

• e2e: All test cases are stored under this folder. This folder contains the actual test files, written in JavaScript, that define the tests to be run.
• Fixtures: This folder contains any data files that are needed for the tests, such as JSON or CSV files.
• Support: There are two files inside the support folder: commands.js and e2e.js
  • command.js: Is the file where your frequently used functions and unique commands are added. It has functions like the login function that you may use in various tests. You can alter some of the functions Cypress generated for you right here.
  • e2e.js: This file is executed before each and every spec file. This file is an excellent location for global configuration and behavior that alters Cypress in the same way as before or before. It just imports commands.js by default, but you can import or need more files to keep things organized.
• Node_Modules: The node_modules directory will have all the node packages installed and all test files will have access to them. When you install Node packages using NPM, they are downloaded and installed in the node_modules directory, which is located in the root directory of your project
• cypress.config.json: cypress.config.json is a configuration file used by Cypress to override the default configuration settings for a project. It is similar to cypress.json, but it is intended to be used as a per-environment configuration file.

Some examples of configuration options that can be set in cypress.config.json include:

• baseUrl: The base URL for the application being tested.
• testFiles: A list of test files to include or exclude from the test suite.
• video: Configuration options for Cypress video recording.
• screenshots: Configuration options for Cypress screenshots.

Basic constructs of Cypress

Cypress used Mocha’s syntax for developing test cases. Key constructs that are frequently used in Cypress test development are listed below.

• describe(): This method is used in Cypress (using Mocha’s syntax) to group together related test cases. It takes two arguments. It takes two arguments: A string that describes the group of test cases (e.g. “Login Page Tests”) and another argument, a callback function that contains the individual test cases (using the it() method).
• it(): This method is used to define an individual test case. It requires two arguments: a string that specifies the test scenario and a callback function that has the test code itself.
• before():  This method is used to run the code under before() block before any test case. The before() method takes one argument: a callback function that contains the setup code to be executed before any of the test cases
• after(): This method is used to run a cleanup once all the test cases are executed. The after() method takes one argument: a callback function that contains the cleanup code to be executed after all the test cases
• beforeEach(): This method is used to run the code under beforeEach() block beforeEach.The beforeEach() method takes one argument: a callback function that contains the code to be executed before each test case
• afterEach(): This method is used to run a cleanup function after each test case. The afterEach() function takes one argument: a callback function that contains the cleanup code to be executed after each test case
• .only(): It is used to run a specified suite or test exclusively, ignoring all other tests and suites. This can be useful when you’re debugging a specific test case or working on a specific suite of tests, and you want to focus on that specific test case or suite without running any others.
• .skip(): It is used to skip a specified suite or test, effectively ignoring it during test execution. This can be useful when you’re working on a test suite or test case that isn’t ready to be run yet, or when you want to temporarily disable a test without deleting it.

The post The Ultimate Guide To End-to-End Testing With Cypress appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

Challenges of frontend testing eCommerce apps

Traditional testing methods don’t always test your eCommerce applications in the same way that your customers shop. Properly capturing user scenarios based on how customers behave in your app is challenging, and writing stable tests that properly test these scenarios scale is tedious and can slow releases.

Data-rich testing scenarios

There’s a lot of data involved in eCommerce apps – product data, user data, app state, and so many different combinations of this data for different users as they shop in your virtual store. All of this data creates a lot of different potential user paths and testing scenarios to cover the different combinations of states based on product information and buyer information.

Multi-screen browsing

Shoppers may be on different browsers, on desktop or different mobile devices, or even using them in tandem to find the product they want – finding the product on their mobile device but completing the purchase on their laptop. A truly omnichannel experience requires that your app looks good and works on every combination of these screen sizes and operating systems.

A/B experimentation

Experimenting with the look and feel of your app can increase conversions and purchase. This puts a lot of pressure on QA to ensure the A/B experiments are properly tested, but these experiments often have complex logic on their own. And to test these A/B experiments, the test will have to mimic the complex experiment logic and understand the context of  the situation. Your product team is doing the work of a permanent test case for an experiment that may be fleeting and not in production for long if it fails.

Localization

There are a lot of global markets and vendors that sell online in many different countries across many different languages. Testing the languages supported is not only a requirement but also a challenge. Building the test cases and resourcing the right people who can test the implemented languages in context takes a lot of time and specific skill sets. To multiply the challenge, each time we add a language, we need to create and maintain new tests across browsers.

Post-production content

Your product or marketing teams may be updating or adding content that enters the app outside of the development process through a CMS, or analysts may be entering information about a new product into an ERP system. Something like adding a new headline or a new percentage to a product may truncate on a smaller screen, going from one line to two lines, which affect spacing elsewhere on the screen or even overlap onto other elements. You’ll need to create a set of tests that are able to be flexibly kicked off and monitored across small aspects of the content that may change without triggering a CI/CD build when changed.

Customer-generated content

Customer-generated content like reviews and product photos are not going to be in your development pipeline. With post-production content, you may have a style guide or requirements for copy and images, but customers aren’t adhering to a style guide. Ensuring that the content appears correctly within your templates for this content is important, and setting character limits and image resolution requirements can keep this content more consistent.

Methods for frontend testing

The traditional way to test frontend functionality includes hundreds of assertions of what the app should do in what we deem are the most important aspects of the experience – like product labels, buy-now buttons, or add-to-cart buttons. Even just testing the priority aspects of your app with these assertions creates technical debt, as things change and tests need to be maintained.

Common methods for frontend testing

We are big believers in doing testing in a layered approach to provide proper coverage of your app. No one way of testing can cover everything. Here are some common methods to include in frontend testing your eCommerce app or website.

Component testing

Component testing is essentially atomic unit tests on components of your frontend. Due to the repeated nature of eCommerce apps – with elements being used across product pages and category pages – testing components of a design system can save a lot of time over checking assertions for individual elements. These components still lack context of the entire application, which leaves room for errors to occur when these components are together in production.

Smoke testing

There’s a lot you can do from a validation standpoint for the web both locally and in test environments to continually make sure that all of your products are showing up. Smoke testing consists of fast tests that validate that the app is able to run without failure, missing bugs that aren’t mission critical. This can include simple crawling of URLs to make sure that they don’t return an error or that uniquely created query parameters are getting created as expected. These tests are the fastest way to get quick uptime coverage for multi-page application e-commerce sites.

End-to-end testing

A common final approach in testing is end-to-end testing around specific scenarios, but even those have challenges. You have to experience end-to-end scenarios to understand them, which means that you’re only able to test for what you know. There may be common bugs that come up in customer tickets or problem areas that you see a lot in QA tickets during your sprints. We can only run so many scenario tests, so you need to take time to establish testing priorities.

Test prioritization

When it comes to prioritizing what to test, it can help to follow the Pareto principle, where 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes. This means that you want to test the most impactful aspects of your eCommerce experience to cover the most impact. By this principle, around 20% of your templates are going to drive 80% of your actual revenue, so it’s really important to prioritize the most important 20% of your app or website.

For eCommerce, the most important parts of the app revolve around things like the:

• Home page: Unless your customer followed a direct link through social or paid media, the home page is likely the landing page for most of your customers. The home page is where you’ll get much of your traffic, so your homepage needs to be on brand and working properly.
• Category pages: Category pages are a chance for you to help guide your customers to what they want. These pages often build off templates for navigational consistency for users, so layout testing is an important part of covering these pages.
• Individual pages: Individual product pages are the most numerous, but when you’re using a design system with components, they’re going to be very common in nature. Like category pages, they are often built from templates and layout testing is key.
• Shopping cart: Your users may be browsing your site as they shop, so you need to test that cart data is maintained as a customer traverses the site. Your checkout system is where your users finalize their purchase, so if something goes wrong with it, you lose a sale.
• Search and filtering: A lot of customers will browse items by key words or filter by specific attributes, so making sure that your product metadata is tested can ensure the products show up in these results.

You start to see that you’re testing a lot of the same things. You just need to make sure that you can either use data-driven testing to make sure you’re getting the most scenarios or cross-browser testing of the most important parts across all the experiences that an end user is getting. Visual testing can kind of combine all those aspects – templated pages, localization, cross-browser testing – all at the same time in a much faster way.

How Applitools helps test eCommerce apps

Applitools is a test automation platform that uses AI to help teams ship flawless digital experiences without the hassle of the traditional testing practices.

With Applitools Eyes and our next-gen testing cloud, Ultrafast Grid, developers and QA engineers can run tests to quickly validate frontend functionality, accessibility, and visual correctness with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

Applitools enables you to test for dynamic content, but also unlock a variety of AI-powered visual testing capabilities:

• Visual regression testing: As your digital storefront changes, Applitools Eyes captures screenshots across browsers and devices and compares them to a previously accepted baseline image of your app. Visual AI in Eyes enables you to test layouts and dynamic content, ignore colors, and ignore specific regions of pages or test specifics with customizable match levels.
• Cross-browser testing: Applitools AI-powered automated visual testing can test visual elements across OS, browser, orientation, and resolution combinations. Just running the first baseline rendering and functional test on a single combination is sufficient to test results across the range of potential platforms.
• Automated analysis: Teams can save time with auto-grouping when testing across different browsers, devices, or screen sizes. Auto-grouping will show something like a missing navigation item as one singular bug.
• Automated maintenance: Auto-maintenance automates the creation of new baselines or failure status across the same groupings created by our auto-grouping feature. Auto-maintenance also enables users to set granular controls over what gets updated automatically between checkpoints, test runs, and more.
• Root cause analysis: When unexpected changes do occur on your site, root cause analysis helps teams pinpoint exactly what changed in the DOM. It surfaces the exact difference in DOM elements based on visual changes – eliminating back and forth hunting down bugs.
• Multi-baseline testing: Applitools Eyes supports visual testing of applications that are undergoing A/B testing by allowing checkpoints to be matched against a baseline that includes multiple variations of the baseline image per checkpoint.
• Accessibility testing: Applitools Contrast Advisor seamlessly integrates into your Applitools Eyes test automation workflow to let you instantly see how well your application complies with WCAG color contrast guidelines – you don’t even need to re-run existing tests.

The live demo in the webinar covered visual regression testing, accessibility testing, and multi-baseline testing. To check out the live demo of using Applitools Eyes to test an eCommerce site, you can view the on-demand webinar. If you’re ready to try it yourself, you can create a free account or reach out to our sales team. Happy testing!

The post Ensuring a Reliable Digital Shopping Experience appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

As a product manager at Applitools I am excited to announce an enriched and updated integration with Testim.io! This enhanced integration makes it easier for testers of any technical ability to use Applitools and our AI-powered visual testing platform by using Testim.io to easily create your test scripts.

What Is Testim.io Used For?

Testim.io is a cloud platform that allows users to create, execute, and maintain automated tests without using code.

It is a perfect tool for getting started with your first automated tests, if you do not have an existing automated testing framework or if you have not started to run tests yet. Testim.io allows you to integrate your own custom code into their steps so you can implement custom validations if you need to.

How Do Applitools and Testim.io Integrate?

The visual validation empowered by Applitools Eyes allows you to compare the visual differences between expected results (baseline) with actual results after creating the tests in Testim.io. By using Visual AI to compare snapshots Applitools Eyes can spot any unexpected changes and highlight them visually. This lets you expand your test coverage to include everything on a given page as well as visually verify your results quickly.

As part of the integration, you can modify test parameters to customize Eyes while working with the Testim UI.

This AI-based visual validation functionality is provided by Applitools and requires simple integration setup in the Eyes application. Learn more.

So, What’s New With Applitools and Testim.io?

This up-to-date integration provides access to Applitools’ latest and greatest capabilities, including Ultrafast Test Cloud, enabling ultrafast cross-browser and cross-platform functional and visual testing. Testim users also now have access to Root Cause Analysis and many more powerful Applitools features!

The new integration also greatly improves on the user experience of test creators adding Applitools Eyes checkpoints to their Testim.io tests. Visual validations can be added right inside Testim and the maintenance and analysis of test results is much simpler.

What Kind of Visual Validations Can You Do?

You can perform the following visual validations:

• Element Visualization – The Validate Element visualization step allows you to compare visual differences of a specific element between your baseline and your current test run.
• Viewport Visualization – The Validate Viewport allows you to compare the visual difference between your baseline and the current test run of your viewport.
• Full-page Visualization – Full-page validation allows you to compare the visual differences between your baseline and your current test run of your entire page.

What Are the New Visual Validation Settings?

Whether you select the element, viewport, or full-page visualization option you can always override the visual setting for that test or step.

The following Applitools Eyes settings can be accessed via the Testim.io UI:

• Add Environment (New) – allows you to select Ultrafast Test Cloud environments. You can select the same test to run on multiple environments: different browser types and viewports for web, Chrome emulation, or iOS simulation for mobile devices. Using Applitools Ultrafast Test Cloud you can now increase your coverage and accelerate your release cycles.
  

• Match Level – When writing a visual test, sometimes we will want to change the comparison method between our test and its baseline, especially when dealing with applications that consist of dynamic content. Here you can update the Applitools Eyes match level directly from Testim UI.
• Enable RCA [Root Cause Analysis] (New) – when this flag is on it will provide insights into the causes of visual mismatches so that when looking at the Eyes dashboard you will be able to see the DOM and CSS that generated with the image.
• Ignore displacement (New) – when this flag is on it will hide differences caused by element displacements. This feature is useful, for example, where content is added or deleted, causing other elements on the page to be displaced and generating additional differences. 
  

User Experience Improvements

In addition to exposing new features in the Testim UI, we have provided better visibility to Testim tests in Applitools Eyes:

• Testim test properties are passed to the Eyes Dashboard to allow better filtering and grouping with all Testim tests properties.
• Testim multi-step and test suites are now also grouped on the Applitools Eyes dashboard and are displayed as one batch to create a better user experience when moving between the two products.
• Testim Selenium and extension modes are supported.

Complete and Scalable AI-Powered UI Testing

Testim.io allows users to quickly create and maintain tests through record and playback. Adding Applitools visual testing with Ultrafast Test Cloud capabilities will make sure your release cycles are short and test analysis and maintenance are easier than ever!

Learn More about Testim.io-Applitools Integration

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Happy testing!

The post Codeless End-to-End AI-Powered Cross Browser UI Testing with Applitools and Testim.io appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

This post talks about an approach to Functional (end-to-end) Test Automation that works for a product available on multiple platforms. 

It shares details on the thought process & criteria involved in creating a solution that includes how to write the tests, and run it across the multiple platforms without any code change.

Lastly, the open-sourced solution also has examples on how to implement a test that orchestrates the simulation between multiple devices / browsers to simulate multiple users interacting with each other as part of the same test.

We will cover the following topics.

• Background
• Case Study
• Test Automation Approach
• Test Automation Implementation
  • Tech Stack
  • Test Intent Specification
    • Multi-User Scenarios
  • Configurable Framework
  • teswiz Framework Architecture
  • Visual Testing & Contrast Advisor
  • Reporting
• How Can You Get Started?

Background

How many times do we see products available only on a single platform? For example, Android app only, or iOS app only?

Organisations typically start building the product on a particular platform, but then they do expand to other platforms as well. 

Once the product is available on multiple platforms, do they differ in their functionality? There definitely would be some UX differences, and in some cases, the way to accomplish the functionality would be different, but the business objectives and features would still be similar across both platforms. Also, one platform may be ahead of the other in terms of feature parity. 

The above aspects of product development are not new.

The interesting question is – how do you build your Functional (End-2-End / UI / System) Test Automation for such products?

Case Study

To answer this question, let’s take an example of any video conferencing application – something that we would all be familiar with in these times. We will refer to this application as “MySocialConnect” for the remainder of this post.

MySocialConnect is available on the following platforms:

• All modern browsers (Chrome / Firefox / Edge / Safari) available on laptop / desktop computers as well as on mobile devices
• Android app via Google’s PlayStore
• iOS app via Apple’s App Store

In terms of functionality, the majority of the functionality is the same across all these platforms. Example:

• Signup / Login
• Start an instant call
• Schedule a call
• Invite registered users to join an on-going call
• Invite non-registered users can join a call
• Share screen
• Video on-off
• Audio on-off
• And so on…

There are also some functionality differences that would exist. Example:

• Safe driving mode is available only in Android and iOS apps
• Flip video camera is available only in Android and iOS apps

Test Automation Approach

So, repeating the big question for MySocialConnect is – how do you build your Functional (End-2-End / UI / System) Test Automation for such products?

I would approach Functional automation of MySocialConnect as follows:

1. The test should be specified only once. The implementation details should figure out how to get the execution happening across any of the supported platforms
2. For the common functionalities, we should implement the business logic only once
3. There should be a way to address differences in business functionality across platforms
4. The value of the automation for MySocialConnect is to simulate “real calls” – i.e. more than one user in the call – and interacting with each other

In addition, I need the following capabilities in my automation:

• Rich reports
  • With on-demand screenshots attached in the report
  • Details of the devices / browsers where the test 
  • Understand trends of test execution results
  • Test Failure analysis capabilities

• Support parallel / distributed execution of tests to get faster feedback
• Visual Testing support using Applitools Visual AI
  • To reduce the number of validations I need to write (less code)
  • Increase coverage (functional and UI / UX)
  • Contrast Advisor to ensure my product meets the WCAG 2.0 / 2.1 guidelines for Accessibility
• Ability to run on local machines or in the CI
• Ability to run the full suite or a subset of tests, on demand, and without any code change
• Ability to run tests across any environment
• Ability to easily specify test data for each supported environment 

Test Automation Implementation

To help implement the criteria mentioned above, I built (and open-sourced on github) my automation framework – teswiz. The implementation is based on the discussion and guidelines in [Visual] Mobile Test Automation Best Practices and Test Automation in the World of AI & ML. 

Tech Stack

After a lot of consideration, I chose the following tech stack and toolset to implement my automated tests in teswiz.

• cucumber-jvm – specify the test in simple, common business language
• AppiumTestDistribution – manages Android and iOS devices, and Appium
• Appium
• Selenium WebDriver
• reportportal.io
• Applitools Visual AI
• gradle

Test Intent Specification

Using Cucumber, the tests are specified with the following criteria:

• The test intent should be clear and “speak” business requirements
• The same test should be able to execute against all supported platforms (assuming feature parity)
• The clutter of the assertions should not pollute the test intent. That is implementation detail

Based on these criteria, here is a simple example of how the test can be written.

The tags on the above test indicates that the test is implemented and ready for execution against the Android apk and the web browser. 

Multi-User Scenarios

Given the context of MySocialConnect, implementing tests that are able to simulate real meeting scenarios would add the most value – as that is the crux of the product.

Hence, there is support built-in to the teswiz framework to allow implementation of multi-user scenarios. The main criteria for implementing such scenarios are:

• One test to orchestrate the simulation of multi-user scenarios
• The test step should indicate “who” is performing the action, and on “which” platform
• The test framework should be able to manage the interactions for each user on the specified platform.

Here is a simple example of how this test can be specified.

In the above example, there are 2 users – “I” and “you”, each on a different platform – “android” and “web” respectively.

Configurable Framework

The automated tests are run in different ways – depending on the context.

Ex: In CI, we may want to run all the tests, for each of the supported platforms

However, on local machines, the QA / SDET / Developers may want to run only specific subset of the tests – be it for debugging, or verifying the new test implementation.

Also, there may be cases where you want to run the tests pointing to your application for a different environment.

The teswiz framework supports all these configurations, which can be controlled from the command-line. This prevents having to make any code / configuration file changes to run a specific subset type of tests.

teswiz Framework Architecture

This is the high-level architecture of the teswiz framework.

Visual Testing & Contrast Advisor

Based on the data from the study done on the “Impact of Visual AI on Test Automation,” Applitools Visual AI helps automate your Functional Tests faster, while making the execution more stable. Along with this, you will get increased test coverage and will be able to find significantly more functional and visual issues compared to the traditional approach.

You can also scale your Test Automation execution seamlessly with the Applitools UltraFast Test Cloud and use the Contrast Advisor capability to ensure the application-under-test meets the accessibility guidelines of the WCAG 2.0 / 2.1 standards very early in the development stage.

Read this blog post about “Visual Testing – Hype or Reality?” to see some real data of how you can reduce the effort, while increasing the test coverage from our implementation significantly by using Applitools Visual AI.

Hence it was a no-brainer to integrate Applitools Visual AI in the teswiz framework to support adding visual assertions to your implementation simply by providing the APPLITOOLS_API_KEY. Advanced configurations to override the defaults for Applitools can be done via the applitools_config.json file. 

This integration works for all the supported browsers of WebDriver and all platforms supported by Appium.

Reporting

It is very important to have good and rich reports of your test execution. These reports not only make it valuable to pinpoint the reasons of the failing test, but also should be able to give an understanding of the trend of execution and quality of the product under test. 

I have used ReportPortal.io as my reporting tool – it is extremely easy to set up and use and allows me to also add screenshots, log files and other information that may seem important along with the test execution to make root cause analysis easy.

How Can You Get Started?

I have open-sourced this teswiz framework so you do not need to reinvent the wheel. See this page to get started – https://github.com/znsio/teswiz#what-is-this-repository-about

Feel free to raise issues / PRs against the project for adding more capabilities that will benefit all.

The post Automating Functional / End-2-End Tests Across Multiple Platforms appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.

How do you reduce code maintenance of your end-to-end tests?

You spend significant effort to develop end-to-end software tests of your web and mobile apps. Do you think you spend too much time on test maintenance?

We assume you are reading this because you have built automation for your end-to-end application tests. When organizations ran these tests with manual testers, test maintenance included informing the testers about the expected behavior change for enhancements and eliminated features, as well as the behavior of new features. Testers might have been informed about appearance changes. Organizations depended on the skills and detail orientation of manual testers to catch any errors.

Because you invested in test automation, you specify your tests as part of your software development process.  Your test construction, however, becomes dependent on developers, because your test controls depend on artifacts your coders create.

Web element locators identify the fields for entering data to set a test condition, as well as the elements to click and initiate action. You might also use locators to validate your test output. Your end-to-end test maintenance effort depends, in large part, on ensuring that locators remain consistent.

Locators And End-To-End Test Maintenance

Application updates can cause your locators to fail. How do you uncover locator changes that can impact your ability to set test conditions or correctly validate output?

Ideally, developers agree not to touch locators. Once they’re set, that’s how they’ll be used. Realistically, locator changes occur and testers get surprised by failing tests.

Some advanced development teams set locators programmatically. You might not depend on statically-set locators. You might use a look-up table or other data structure to uncover the locator you need for a given task. Some programmatic approaches can reduce the failures caused by changing locators.

You incur maintenance costs when you upgrade your application and discover failing tests. If you have failing tests after an application upgrade, you will need to debug the test code. Ultimately, you have to figure out if the test failed due to broken application code or broken testing code.

Actually, you cannot count on the passing tests, either. When you upgrade your application, your test code might continue to pass, but parts of your application unusable. It is difficult and cumbersome to write locators that uncover visual errors.

Visuals As An Alternative To Locators

Visuals provide a great alternative to coded locators. Some test approaches require visual images to apply test conditions. Other approaches use visuals to validate the output of a test.

When you use visuals to control the test conditions, you need a way to ensure that your visual-based controls update consistently. If you update the application, your visuals might change, and you will lose the ability to control a test.

For visuals as outputs, you need a way to identify and approve expected changes and identify unexpected changes as bugs. Since visuals can apply to multiple pages (think an app header and footer), you also would like to group common changes across multiple pages and accept them in a bulk action.

For configuring test conditions using either visuals or locators, your will need to do maintenance work when your applications change the layout or naming of the control interfaces. For validation, however, visual is much more efficient. Visual validation can capture all the changes that affect a given page. When you

Applitools For End-to-End Tests

At Applitools, we focus on visuals to validate the output of any test condition you apply. You can use Applitools along with coded locators to ensure you catch visual errors. Or, you can choose to remove coded locators and replace them with a visual capture and validation. step

We recommend using Applitools to validate your end-to-end tests for several reasons.

• End-to-end tests validate the user experience, which is inherently visual.
• You likely already have functional coverage for your unit and system tests. Using those tests verbatim for end-to-end tests gives you no additional knowledge of your application behavior.
• End-to-end test code with visual assertions requires much less code maintenance.
• Applitools Auto-Maintenance and newly-announced Smart Assist make it easy to deploy and maintain your visual assertions.

Applitools uses an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to recognize individual visual elements on a page. We call this capability Applitools Visual AI. Rather than use pixels to determine visual differences, Applitools identifies and compares visually-distinct versions of elements. Visual AI distinguishes Applitools from all other visual comparison solutions because

By using Visual AI, you capture an entire page with a single assertion. Your captured page gets loaded into the Applitools Eyes server. The output comparison relies on fewer lines of code and reduces any fragility associated with using locators.

Applitools Reduces End-to-End Test Maintenance

Applitools makes it easy to maintain the visual data it collects. A great Visual AI feature is called “Automated Test Maintenance”, or Auto Maintenance. With Auto Maintenance, Applitools identifies common visual differences found on multiple pages. When you inspect a difference found by Applitools, you can choose to accept it or reject it. Once you have made the choice, Auto Maintenance lets you know about the other pages with the identical difference. With one click, you can choose to accept or reject the change for those pages as well.

For instance, you update the color scheme of your application logo. Ths logo is found in the same place on every page. You might think you have to go page by page and accept the change. Auto Maintenance makes it easy to accept all the update logos. You accept the first found logo change, then you are prompted to accept the changes everywhere else.

Simplifying Deployment With Smart Assist

Another useful feature in Applitools Visual AI is the recently-announced Smart Assist. Applitools allows you to choose among three useful visual comparison levels: Strict, Content, and Layout.

• In Strict mode, Applitools highlights any user-identifiable visual change.
• In Content mode, Applitools inspects content, not the color, font, or other visual difference. For example, you change CSS and want to ensure that nothing else has changed.
• Layout mode handles dynamic content on a page. Applitools compares the structure around the dynamic content, and that the dynamic content has no errors.

On its own, Applitools provides you lots of flexibility. You can choose the comparison level for a given page. If necessary, you can apply different comparison level to a specific region on a page.  For example, say you have third-party ads on your pages. You might define those regions as “Layout”, while the rest of the page is Strict.

With Smart Assist, Applitools suggests the appropriate comparison level as well as exceptions for individual regions within the screen images. Even if you choose Strict as the default page comparison level, Applitools will suggest appropriate exceptions for you. Strict, content, layout, or even ignore – Smart Assist can help you make the right call.

Conclusion

Visual AI eases test deployment and maintenance. You eliminate the need to validate pages based on DOM locators, which reduces your total lines of test code. You eliminate the need to update DOM locators in your test code, reducing test debug and maintenance time. And, your resulting test code evaluates your application based on what a user sees – not simply inspecting the DOM.

Applitools Smart Assist helps you ensure that you use the right level of comparison for your application visual tests. You can become an Applitools expert by letting Applitools Smart Assist be your guide.

Cover Photo by Peter G on Unsplash

For More Information

• Visual Testing: A Guide for Front End Developers
• Modern Cross Browser Testing with Cypress and Applitools
• How Do You Catch More Bugs In Your End-To-End Tests?
• Sign up for a free Applitools account.
• Request an Applitools demo.

The post How Do You Simplify End-To-End Test Maintenance? appeared first on AI-Powered End-to-End Testing | Applitools.