Automation Testing is one of the most beneficial ways to test the proper functioning of your web application. It not only helps the developers to save time but also reduces the total number of errors to the bare minimum. With this form of testing, companies can also free up a huge portion of mental real estate that they can reinvest in other critical areas of the web application development life cycle. All these factors easily justify that Automation Testing is a Life Changer for most web developing companies. However certain developers especially the fresh automation testers are confused about the test automation tools for web application development. Some of the major concerns involve the areas to deploy test automation and the priority of testing.
In this article, we are going to discuss everything that you need to know about test automation tools. We will also justify how test automation tools help to increase the efficiency of Automation Testing procedures.
Factors to Consider During the Tool Selection Process
While choosing the perfect web automation tools, there are various factors that the developer must consider to make the correct decision. We can divide these factors into two major categories. These categories are mainly personalised factors and general requirements. Under personalised factors, we can classify the preferences of individual developers and particular development project requirements. Now, let us look at the generalized factors that can influence the entire web development industry:
- The web automation tool must be open source. This will allow the developers to integrate it into the development environment for free.
- It should have the capability to run on multiple Browsers and a variety of operating systems.
- It should be feature-rich and offer various customization options. All these factors will help the developers to configure it according to their preferences.
- The web Automation tool must be easy to use. This is because a company cannot have the developers investing their time in understanding the tool instead of performing the testing processes.
Understanding the Tests That Require Automation
Before integrating a test automation tool, the developers must have a clear idea about the areas where they need to implement automation testing. This process will help them to save a lot of time in the application development life cycle. Let us take a look at some of the factors that you must consider while deploying automation testing:
It is logical to test all the components of the graphical user interface with automation testing. This is because various elements of GUI are constantly changing according to the evolution of the web application. The company has to spend a significant amount of money to maintain the test cases and keep them updated.
The best decision is to choose unit testing wherever possible. Unit testing allows the developers to divide the testing processes into tiny components.
Some of the best tests to automate are those that involve testing the overall load on the web application and those that are repetitive. You can also perform automation testing on tasks that run on multiple platforms, browsers and operating systems at the same time. Automation Testing is highly suitable for performance testing procedures that are powered with multiple datasets.
The Best Web Automation Tools to Perform Automated Web Testing
We finished discussing all the factors that you must consider before choosing the test automation tools and areas that require test automation. Now, let us discuss the best web automation tools for every company. All these tools offer significant features that can elevate your web application testing experience:
1. Lamdatest
Lamdatest is a platform that developers can use to test the cross-browser compatibility of their web applications. With the help of cross-browser compatibility testing, companies can ensure that the web application retains its maximum performance irrespective of various external features. These external factors include the variation in the web browser version, operating system, the platform of the device and device specifications. Let us take a look at some of the prominent features of Lamdatest:
- Lamdatest uses a safe and Secure Selenium grid to perform all the individual testing processes. It also enables end-to-end encryption to test sensitive user data on various web applications.
- Lamdatest offers parallel testing of web applications. Using this feature the developers can initiate multiple testing processes at the same time. They can also run simultaneous compatibility tests on different combinations of devices and operating systems.
- Using this platform, the developers can verify the cross-browser compatibility of their natively hosted web applications.
- Lambdatest has an interactive way to store all the final test reports. The developers can use these test reports for future references and find out all the errors in the web application.
- Lamdatest also allows web developing companies to combine manual test reports with automation test reports. Using this process, they can maintain a proper track of their development activity log.
2. Selenium
Selenium is one of the most popular frameworks to perform automation testing of web applications. Many developers wrongly consider it to be a single tool. In reality, Selenium is a complete package of various libraries and test automation tools. It has various features that allow the developers to run it on various Automation Testing frameworks, programming languages, operating systems and browser versions. Let us take a look at some of the major advantages of Selenium:
- It is one of the most versatile tools to initiate automation testing in any development environment.
- Selenium has a massive community of Tech enthusiasts that you can rely on. This community is always working hard to introduce new and helpful features in the future updates of Selenium. You can also refer to this community in case you are stuck with any new feature of the test automation procedure.
- With the help of Selenium, the developers can also create Complex browser-centered automation test scripts. This process helps the company to optimize the testing process according to the requirements of the project.
- Selenium also helps developers to conduct different forms of testing. These testing processes include exploratory testing, regression testing and the quick reproduction of bugs.
3. Watir
Watir is often considered to be a powerful tool for the introduction of test automation. Many industry experts define it to be a Ruby library that replicates all the behaviour of a user interacting with a web application. Let us consider some of the major advantages offered by this test automation tool:
- Using Watir, the developers can create automation tests that are very easy to read and maintain for long term usage.
- The developers can run it on any web application without any form of Pre-requirements. This means that this test automation tool is not dependent on the programming language of the web application.
- Using this tool, the developers can perform data-driven testing of web applications. This form of testing helps to analyze how the web application reacts to various forms of data entered by the user.
- Watir is essentially capable of testing all the components of a web application. This means that you can use it to test the buttons, links, forms and user responses.
- The developer also has the option to leverage the powerful API handling capabilities of Watir. This feature helps the company to use the full potential of this test automation tool.
- The Ruby commands help developers to combine Automation Testing with manual testing to increase the test coverage.
Developers also have the option to integrate this automation tool with other business-driven testing tools.
4. TestComplete
TestComplete is one of the top contenders for a powerful and feature-rich automated web testing system. It is one of the very few tools that have all the capabilities to perform multiple automation testing processes. For instance, the developers can use it to perform regression testing, parallel testing and cross-browser compatibility testing of applications. Let us look at some of the most unique features of TestComplete
- It is one of the most scalable Automation Testing tools as it has more than 1500 real test environments.
- You can use this Automation Testing tool to test the compatibility of both mobile web applications and desktop web applications.
- TestComplete also has the capabilities to test the smooth functioning of hybrid applications that perform on various systems.
However, one of the major drawbacks of this tool is that it has certain errors with object recognition during playback. So, developers must keep this factor in mind while performing visual testing with TestComplete.
5. Katalon Studio
Katalon is one of the easy to use, robust and open-source test automation tools that are currently available in the market. It is a codeless test automation tool that is perfectly suitable for the creation of simple, maintainable and reusable test suites. Let us consider some of the other major features of Katalon:
- It is completely accessible to any form of automation tester. This means that even automation testers who do not have any form of programming language background can use this test automation tool.
- It comes with a whole set of various powerful features that enriches the testing experience. The developers can also use these features to customize the testing experience according to their preferences.
- It has a customizable workflow that companies can use to maintain a proper activity log.
- The Katalon Studio test automation tool also supports image-based testing of web applications.
- It allows the developers to enable smooth integration with a variety of workflow tools.
- This test automation tool comes with integrated support for Java scripting languages and Groovy.
- The developers can enable visual representation of every step in the test automation process with the help of this tool.
The Final Verdict
So, we can easily conclude that web automation tools have a critical role in increasing the efficiency of automated web testing. However, there are various factors that developers must consider to use the full potential of this testing process. They should also perform a loyalty check before introducing any third-party application in their test environment. The best way to perform this process is to check for user reviews on various online forums. Here, the developers can find the honest ratings of multiple developers who are currently engaged with this web automation tool. Companies should also consider automation testing as a long-term investment to analyze its huge return on investment.
Many experts consider that Automation Testing is one of the critical factors that will guarantee a bright future for any web development company. So, developers must consider test automation as one of the stepping stones that will guarantee a massive user base in the coming years.
