Forem: arnabroychowdhury

14 Best GUI Testing Tools in 2026: A Practical Guide for Dev and QA Teams

arnabroychowdhury — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:39:19 +0000

Deploy goes out. Code is clean, unit tests pass, CI pipeline is green. Then a user screenshots a broken dropdown on Safari, a misaligned checkout button on a Galaxy S23, or a modal that refuses to close on Firefox. These are not code bugs. They are GUI bugs, the kind that erode trust, inflate support tickets, and quietly kill conversion rates.

GUI testing tools catch these before your users do. They simulate real interactions across browsers, devices, and screen sizes. The best ones go further: pixel-level visual regression detection, self-healing when the UI changes, and direct CI/CD integration so nothing ships without validation. Platforms like TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) are built specifically for this, combining visual regression, cross-browser coverage, and AI-native testing into a single pipeline-ready platform.

Here are 14 of the best GUI testing tools in 2026, what each does well, and how to choose the right fit for your stack.

What Are GUI Testing Tools (and Why Should You Care)?

GUI testing tools validate that the graphical user interface of your application works correctly from the user's perspective. They go beyond checking backend logic or API contracts. Instead, they answer a more immediate question: does the thing the user sees actually work?

That means verifying buttons trigger the right actions, forms accept and validate input properly, layouts render consistently across environments, and visual elements do not shift or break after code changes.

Modern GUI testing tools typically cover four core areas:

Cross-browser and cross-device validation ensures your interface looks and behaves the same on Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and across mobile and desktop viewports.
Visual testing compares screenshots of your UI against approved baselines to catch unintended layout shifts, font changes, or rendering differences.
Functional GUI testing simulates user flows like login, checkout, or navigation to confirm workflows are not broken.
Accessibility testing ensures users with disabilities can interact with your interface through screen readers, keyboard navigation, and proper color contrast.

If you are shipping web or mobile apps, GUI testing is not optional. It is the last line of defense between your product and a bad user experience.

The 14 Best GUI Testing Tools for 2026

1. TestMu AI's SmartUI

SmartUI by TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) is purpose-built for visual regression testing at scale. It runs pixel-level and DOM-aware comparisons across browsers, devices, PDFs, Figma designs, and Storybook components. The AI-driven SmartIgnore feature filters false positives from dynamic content like timestamps, ads, and user-generated data.

What makes it stand out:

SmartIgnore via APIs and annotations eliminates noise from dynamic elements. Define, ignore, or select regions manually, through the DOM, or directly in code.
Multi-framework support covers Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, TestCafe, Storybook, Figma CLI, Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest.
Pre-snapshot JavaScript execution lets you stabilize dynamic states before capturing screenshots.
Layout comparison mode detects shifts and misplacements, especially useful for responsive and localized testing.
Smart Crop for mobile automatically removes status and navigation bars from screenshots taken with Appium or Espresso.

Best for: Teams that need automated visual validation across large test suites with minimal false positives.

Check this guide to run your first visual test with SmartUI.

2. Selenium

Selenium remains the foundational tool for browser-based GUI testing. Its WebDriver API provides standardized control over Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, and it supports Java, Python, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript. While it does not have built-in visual testing, it integrates with virtually every CI tool and cloud testing platform.

Key strengths: Multi-language support, cross-browser coverage, massive ecosystem of integrations, parallel testing support through Selenium Grid, and a low barrier to entry with Selenium IDE for record-and-playback.

Best for: Teams with coding expertise who need flexible, extensible browser automation.

3. Cypress

Cypress runs directly inside the browser, giving it native access to the DOM and real-time feedback during test execution. It handles asynchronous UI changes automatically (no manual waits), and its time-travel debugging feature captures snapshots at every step so you can inspect exactly what happened when a test fails.

Key strengths: Real-time browser execution, automatic waiting, time-travel debugging, cross-browser support (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, WebKit), and seamless CI/CD integration.

Best for: Frontend-heavy teams that want fast feedback loops and intuitive debugging.

4. Playwright

Playwright, developed by Microsoft, handles the complexities of modern web UIs, including shadow DOMs, iframes, and multi-tab scenarios. It supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit natively and offers mobile emulation for responsive testing. Parallel execution is built in, making it efficient for large test suites.

Key strengths: Shadow DOM and iframe handling, mobile emulation, cross-platform execution (Windows, macOS, Linux), and native parallel test execution.

Best for: Teams building complex SPAs or progressive web apps that need reliable cross-browser automation.

5. Puppeteer

Puppeteer is Google's JavaScript library for controlling Chrome and Chromium. It provides full access to the browser's rendering engine and DevTools, making it ideal for screenshot capture, PDF generation, network interception, and DOM manipulation. It runs in both headless and headed modes.

Key strengths: Deep Chrome integration, headless/headed modes, screenshot and PDF generation, advanced network and DOM control, and smooth CI/CD integration.

Best for: JavaScript-centric teams focused on Chrome-based applications or needing granular browser control.

6. Appium

Appium is the go-to open-source framework for mobile GUI testing. It works with Android and iOS, supports native, hybrid, and mobile web apps, and lets you write tests in Java, Python, Ruby, or JavaScript. It does not require modifying the app under test, which simplifies adoption.

Key strengths: Cross-platform mobile testing, multi-language support, real device and emulator compatibility, no app modification needed, and CI/CD pipeline integration.

Best for: Mobile teams that need a single test framework for Android and iOS.

7. UiPath

UiPath brings its RPA automation capabilities to GUI testing. It mimics real user interactions across web, desktop, and legacy systems using visual workflow builders. This makes it accessible to teams without deep coding skills while still supporting enterprise-scale orchestration.

Key strengths: Visual workflow design, cross-technology support (web, desktop, legacy), reusable testing components, and enterprise orchestration capabilities.

Best for: Enterprise teams testing across legacy and modern systems who want low-code automation.

8. WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO is built on Node.js and combines WebDriver and Chrome DevTools protocols for browser automation. It integrates natively with Mocha, Jasmine, and Cucumber, supports parallel execution, and works with cloud testing grids for scalable cross-browser testing.

Key strengths: WebDriver and DevTools dual protocol, framework integrations (Mocha, Jasmine, Cucumber), parallel execution, and cloud grid compatibility.

Best for: JavaScript/Node.js teams looking for a flexible, modern web testing framework.

9. Tricentis Tosca

Tricentis Tosca uses a model-based approach where test logic is abstracted into reusable models, reducing maintenance overhead. It supports web, mobile, SAP, and desktop applications and uses risk-based prioritization to focus testing effort on the most business-critical areas.

Key strengths: Model-based test design, risk-based prioritization, cross-technology support (web, mobile, SAP, desktop), reusable modules, and enterprise-grade reporting.

Best for: Large enterprises with complex, multi-technology application portfolios.

Test your UI across 3,000+ browser and OS combinations. Try TestMu AI for free.

10. Ranorex Studio

Ranorex Studio offers robust object recognition and a low-code approach to GUI automation across web, desktop, and mobile. Its data-driven testing, built-in reporting, and video recording of test runs make it a strong choice for teams that need reliable automation without heavy programming requirements.

Best for: QA teams that need powerful GUI automation without extensive coding skills.

11. Squish GUI Tester

Squish, by Qt Group, excels at automating GUI testing across platforms and frameworks, particularly Qt-based applications. It also supports Java, .NET, and web UIs, offers BDD syntax (Gherkin), and integrates into CI/CD pipelines for scalable automation.

Best for: Teams building cross-platform desktop applications, especially with Qt.

12. AutoIt

AutoIt is a free, lightweight scripting tool for automating Windows desktop GUIs. Its BASIC-like syntax makes it easy to learn, and it handles keyboard, mouse, and window operations effectively. It is ideal for quick automation of repetitive Windows tasks.

Best for: Windows-only teams needing simple, fast desktop GUI automation.

13. QF-Test

QF-Test provides stable component recognition and low-code scripting for Java, web, desktop, and mobile GUI testing. Its reusable test case architecture and detailed reporting make it well suited for large-scale enterprise testing environments.

Best for: Enterprise teams managing complex, multi-platform GUI test suites.

14. Functionize

Functionize uses AI and natural language processing to create, manage, and self-heal GUI tests. When UI elements change, tests adapt automatically instead of breaking. Cloud-native execution supports massive parallel runs across browsers and devices.

Best for: Teams with rapidly evolving UIs that need low-maintenance, scalable test automation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best GUI testing tool for beginners?

TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) SmartUI is one of the easiest starting points for visual testing. It offers a no-code baseline comparison workflow where you provide URLs and it handles screenshot capture, pixel-level diffing, and AI-powered false positive filtering across browsers and devices without writing a single test script. For functional GUI testing, Cypress gives beginners real-time browser feedback and automatic waits that eliminate common debugging headaches, while Selenium IDE provides record-and-playback with zero coding required.

Can GUI testing be fully automated?

Most GUI testing can be automated, including functional flows, visual regression checks, and cross-browser validation. However, subjective usability assessments and exploratory edge cases still benefit from manual review. The most effective approach combines automated GUI testing for repetitive validation with targeted manual testing for UX evaluation.

What is the difference between GUI testing and functional testing?

Functional testing verifies that application logic works correctly (e.g., login returns a session token). GUI testing verifies that the interface renders and responds correctly (e.g., the login button is visible, clickable, and positioned correctly across browsers). GUI testing sits closer to the end user's experience.

How do GUI testing tools handle dynamic content?

Most tools offer strategies for dynamic elements. TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) SmartUI uses AI-powered SmartIgnore to filter dynamic content like ads or timestamps from visual comparisons. Functionize uses self-healing to adapt locators when elements change. Playwright and Cypress use smart selectors and automatic waits to handle asynchronous updates.

Which GUI testing tools support accessibility testing?

TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) offers a dedicated Accessibility Testing Agent that validates WCAG compliance across web applications. Playwright and Cypress can integrate with axe-core for automated accessibility checks. For comprehensive accessibility audits that meet regulatory standards like ADA or WCAG 2.2, specialized tools integrated into a broader testing platform provide the most thorough coverage.

What is visual regression testing and why does it matter?

Visual regression testing compares screenshots of your UI against approved baselines to detect unintended changes: shifted layouts, broken styles, missing elements, or rendering differences across browsers. It catches issues that functional tests miss because functional tests do not verify what the user actually sees. Tools like TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) SmartUI automate this at scale with pixel-level and DOM-aware comparisons.

Final Thoughts

GUI testing is the bridge between code quality and user experience. The tools in this guide cover the full spectrum: from open-source frameworks like Selenium and Playwright to AI-powered platforms like TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) SmartUI and Functionize.

The right tool depends on your technology stack, team capabilities, and scale requirements. But regardless of what you choose, the underlying principle is the same: if you are not testing the interface your users interact with, you are shipping blind.

Start with the use case that causes the most pain (visual regressions, cross-browser inconsistencies, mobile layout breaks), pick the tool that addresses it best, and integrate it into your CI/CD pipeline so every deploy is validated.

If GUI bugs are reaching production, TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) SmartUI gives you AI-powered visual regression testing across 3,000+ browser and device combinations. Free tier available, no credit card required.

13 Chrome Extensions Every Developer Should Actually Use in 2026

arnabroychowdhury — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:06:16 +0000

Chrome's developer tools are solid out of the box. DevTools handles most inspection, debugging, and profiling tasks. But there are gaps: session management across projects, instant cross-browser testing, visual feedback collection, font and color identification, link validation, and technology detection. That is where extensions come in.

The problem is that the Chrome Web Store lists thousands of developer-focused extensions, and most of them are mediocre, outdated, or redundant. This guide cuts through the noise.

These are 13 extensions that solve specific, recurring development problems, each one earning its place in your toolbar through daily usefulness.

Quick Reference: All 13 Extensions at a Glance

Extension	What It Solves	Category	Cost
TestMu AI Screenshots	Cross-browser screenshot testing from Chrome	Testing	Free tier
Session Buddy	Save and switch between tab sessions across projects	Productivity	Free
Usersnap	Visual bug reporting with annotated screenshots	Collaboration	Free tier
Web Developer	Quick toggle for JS, CSS, cookies, and page elements	Debugging	Free
ColorPick Eyedropper	Extract hex/RGB color values from any page element	Design	Free
User Agent Switcher	Override browser user-agent for compatibility testing	Testing	Free
Ghostery	Detect trackers, pixels, and scripts on any page	Privacy/Audit	Free
IE Tab	Render pages with the IE engine inside Chrome	Compatibility	Free
Wappalyzer	Identify tech stack behind any website	Research	Free tier
Click and Clean	Clear cache, cookies, and history in one click	Utility	Free
WhatFont	Identify fonts on any webpage by hovering	Design	Free
Check My Links	Scan page for broken and redirected links	QA/SEO	Free
Dimensions	Measure distances, padding, and margins on-page	Design	Free

The Extensions, Explained

1. TestMu AI Screenshots: Cross-Browser Testing Without Leaving Chrome

Cross-browser testing is essential but tedious. You cannot ignore Firefox, Safari, Edge, and older browser versions just because you develop in Chrome. The TestMu AI Chrome extension lets you capture full-page screenshots across 25+ browser and OS combinations simultaneously, directly from your current tab.

Instead of maintaining virtual machines or manually opening every browser, you click the extension icon, select your target configurations, and get a visual comparison of how your page renders across all of them. The test log keeps a history of previous screenshot tests so you can track regressions over time.

What makes it practical:

Capture screenshots across 25+ browser/OS combinations in a single click from your current tab
Save favorite configurations so you are not re-selecting the same browsers every time
Schedule screenshot captures for specific dates and times to track visual consistency over deployments
Geolocation testing to see how your site looks from different countries
Access a full test log with historical screenshot data for regression tracking

Best for: Frontend developers and QA teams who need visual cross-browser validation without spinning up VMs or device labs.

2. Session Buddy: Save Your Context, Not Just Your Tabs

Chrome profiles let you separate settings and bookmarks, but they do not help when you need to quickly switch between project-specific tab sets. Session Buddy saves your entire tab session (every open tab, grouped logically) and lets you restore it later with one click.

If you work on multiple projects or clients simultaneously and find yourself constantly reopening the same 15 tabs for each one, this extension eliminates that overhead entirely. Save a session called "Project Alpha" with your staging environment, Jira board, API docs, and monitoring dashboard. Switch to "Project Beta" and back without losing anything.

Best for: Developers juggling multiple projects, client work, or separate dev/staging/prod environments.

3. Usersnap: Visual Bug Reports That Actually Make Sense

Bug reports that say "it looks broken on my screen" are useless. Usersnap lets anyone capture a screenshot of the current page, annotate it with arrows, highlights, and notes, and file it directly to your project dashboard. All context (browser info, console logs, page URL) is attached automatically.

This extension bridges the gap between developers and non-technical stakeholders. Instead of a 5-message Slack thread trying to reproduce a visual bug, you get a single annotated screenshot with all the metadata you need to fix it.

Best for: Teams where designers, PMs, or clients report visual issues that need developer action.

4. Web Developer Toolbar: Chrome Inspector on Steroids

Chrome DevTools is powerful but buried in menus. The Web Developer toolbar adds a persistent button that gives you one-click access to toggle JavaScript, disable CSS, outline elements, view cookies, inspect forms, and dozens of other actions you normally dig through DevTools panels to find.

Think of it as a shortcut layer on top of DevTools. It does not replace the inspector; it makes the most common actions faster to reach, especially when you are testing cross-browser compatibility and need to quickly isolate whether a rendering issue is CSS, JS, or content-related.

Best for: Every web developer. This is as close to a universal must-have as Chrome extensions get.

5. ColorPick Eyedropper: Grab Any Color from Any Page

When replicating a design without proper UI specs (which happens more often than anyone admits), you need to extract exact colors from existing pages. ColorPick works like the Photoshop eyedropper: hover over any element or image and get the hex code and RGB value instantly.

It sounds simple because it is. But it removes the friction of right-clicking, inspecting, and hunting through CSS rules to find a color value. When you need it, it saves real time.

Best for: Frontend developers matching designs, replicating UIs, or auditing color consistency.

6. User Agent Switcher: Test How Servers See Your Browser

Some websites serve different content based on the browser's user-agent string. User Agent Switcher lets you override Chrome's default UA from the toolbar, so you can test how your site responds when it thinks the visitor is on Safari, Firefox, Edge, or even a mobile browser, without switching applications.

This is particularly useful for debugging server-side rendering differences, testing UA-dependent redirects, or verifying that your responsive logic handles different device types correctly at the server level, not just via CSS media queries.

Best for: Developers debugging server-side content delivery or UA-dependent behavior.

7. Ghostery: See Every Tracker, Pixel, and Script on a Page

Ghostery detects and lists every tracking pixel, JavaScript tracker, analytics snippet, and embedded script running on a page. When you visit any website, it shows you exactly what third-party code is active, from Google Analytics to Facebook pixels to obscure data brokers.

For developers, this is less about privacy (though that matters too) and more about understanding what scripts a site loads, diagnosing performance bottlenecks from third-party code, and auditing your own sites for unwanted or outdated tracking scripts.

Best for: Developers auditing site performance, debugging third-party script conflicts, or reviewing tracker implementations.

8. IE Tab: Render Internet Explorer Inside Chrome (Windows Only)

Yes, Internet Explorer is technically dead. But legacy enterprise applications, government portals, and internal tools still rely on IE-specific rendering. IE Tab embeds the IE engine directly into a Chrome tab, letting you test pages against IE 6 through IE 9 without opening a separate browser or virtual machine.

If your users include enterprise or government clients, this extension saves hours of compatibility testing. The limitation is that it only works on Windows.

Best for: Developers maintaining legacy web applications or supporting enterprise clients on older systems.

9. Wappalyzer: Instant Tech Stack Detection

Wappalyzer identifies the technology behind any website with a single click. It detects frontend frameworks (React, Vue, Angular), CMS platforms (WordPress, Shopify), analytics tools (Google Analytics, Mixpanel), server technologies, CDNs, and more.

This is invaluable for competitive research, client discovery, and architecture planning. Before proposing a tech stack for a project, check what similar sites are built on. Before joining a new team, scan their production site to understand their stack before day one.

Best for: Developers doing competitive analysis, freelancers scoping client work, or engineers onboarding to new projects.

10. Click and Clean: One-Click Cache and Cookie Purge

During development, stale cache and cookies cause more confusion than actual bugs. A CSS change that does not render? Stale cache. A login flow that behaves inconsistently? Old session cookies. Click and Clean lets you purge cache, cookies, history, local storage, and more with a single toolbar click, no confirmation dialogs or DevTools menus.

You can customize exactly what gets cleared, so you can keep cookies for sites you are logged into while clearing cache and local storage for the project you are testing.

Best for: Every developer. You will use this multiple times per day.

11. WhatFont: Identify Any Font by Hovering

Right-click, inspect, scroll to font-family, cross-reference with the computed styles tab. Or install WhatFont and hover over any text to instantly see the font family, size, weight, line height, and rendering source (Google Fonts, Typekit, system font).

It is a small quality-of-life improvement that adds up across hundreds of daily interactions with text on the web.

Best for: Frontend developers and designers who regularly need to identify or match typography.

12. Check My Links: Scan for Broken Links in Seconds

Broken links hurt SEO, user experience, and credibility. Check My Links crawls every link on the current page and highlights each one as valid, redirected, or broken. It runs in seconds and gives you an immediate visual map of link health.

Run this before every deployment on key pages (homepages, documentation, landing pages) to catch broken links before your users or Google does.

Best for: Developers doing pre-deployment QA, content teams maintaining documentation, and SEO-conscious engineering teams.

13. Dimensions: Measure Anything on the Page

Dimensions measures the distance between any two elements on a page, showing padding, margins, and spacing in real time as you move your cursor. It is more of a design tool than a development tool, but for developers who work closely with designers or need to verify that CSS matches spec, it is extremely useful.

Instead of calculating pixel values from DevTools box models, you hover and get the measurement immediately.

Best for: Developers working from design specs or verifying pixel-perfect implementations.

Why Chrome Dominates Developer Tooling

Chrome holds roughly 66% of the desktop browser market globally. That market share drives a self-reinforcing cycle: more users means more extensions means more developer attention means better tools. Chrome's DevTools are already among the most comprehensive built-in debugging suites, and the extension ecosystem fills every remaining gap.

But market share also means that developers can fall into the trap of only testing in Chrome. Your users are on Safari, Firefox, Edge, and mobile browsers too. That is why cross-browser testing extensions like TestMu AI Screenshots are not optional. They are essential for shipping reliable UIs across the full browser landscape.

How to Build Your Extension Stack Without Bloating Chrome

Chrome extensions consume memory. Every active extension adds to your browser's RAM footprint. Here is a practical approach to getting the benefits without the performance cost:

Install only what you use weekly. If you have not used an extension in the past two weeks, disable or uninstall it.
Group extensions by workflow. Keep testing extensions (TestMu AI, Check My Links, User Agent Switcher) together. Keep design tools (ColorPick, WhatFont, Dimensions) together. Enable each group when you need it.
Use Chrome profiles for separation. Create a "Development" profile with your dev extensions and a "Browsing" profile without them. This keeps your personal browsing lightweight.
Audit permissions. Check what data each extension can access. Extensions that request access to "all sites" should be limited to only the domains you need them for.

Final Thoughts

Chrome ships with strong DevTools, but the extensions above fill the gaps that DevTools cannot: session management across projects, instant cross-browser screenshots, visual bug reporting, technology detection, and one-click cache control. The developers who get the most out of Chrome are not the ones with the longest extension list. They are the ones who install five or six tools that match their actual workflow and use them daily without thinking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best Chrome extensions for web developers in 2026?

The most useful Chrome extensions for web developers in 2026 include Session Buddy for tab session management, TestMu AI Screenshots for cross-browser visual testing, Web Developer Toolbar for quick element toggling, Wappalyzer for tech stack detection, Ghostery for script auditing, and Click and Clean for one-click cache purging. The best stack depends on whether you focus on frontend development, testing, or design work.

What Chrome extensions help with cross-browser testing?

The TestMu AI Screenshot Chrome extension captures full-page screenshots across 25+ browser and OS combinations simultaneously from your current tab. User Agent Switcher lets you test how servers respond to different browser identifiers. IE Tab renders pages with the Internet Explorer engine inside Chrome for legacy compatibility testing. For comprehensive cross-browser validation, cloud testing platforms provide the most thorough coverage.

Are Chrome extensions safe for developers to use?

Most popular extensions from established developers are safe, but every extension has some level of access to your browser data. To minimize risk, install only from the Chrome Web Store, review the permissions each extension requests, limit site access to specific domains when possible, and regularly audit and remove extensions you no longer use. Avoid extensions from unknown publishers that request broad permissions.

Do Chrome extensions slow down the browser?

Yes. Every active extension consumes memory and can impact browser performance. The impact depends on the extension's complexity and what it does in the background. Extensions that monitor all page loads (like Ghostery or ad blockers) have a higher footprint than on-demand tools (like ColorPick or WhatFont). Best practice is to disable extensions you are not actively using and organize them by workflow using Chrome profiles.

What is the best Chrome extension for identifying website technology?

Wappalyzer is the most widely used technology detection extension. It identifies frontend frameworks (React, Vue, Angular), CMS platforms (WordPress, Shopify), analytics tools, server technologies, CDNs, and more with a single click. It is useful for competitive research, client discovery, and onboarding to new projects.

How do I test my website on different browsers from Chrome?

You can use the TestMu AI Screenshot Chrome extension to capture visual comparisons across 25+ browser/OS combinations without leaving Chrome. For user-agent level testing, User Agent Switcher lets you spoof different browser identifiers. For full interactive cross-browser testing, TestMu AI's Real Device Cloud provides live sessions on real browsers and devices accessible from your Chrome browser.

What Chrome extensions do frontend developers need?

Frontend developers benefit most from ColorPick Eyedropper for color extraction, WhatFont for typography identification, Dimensions for spacing measurement, Web Developer Toolbar for quick element toggling, and TestMu AI Screenshots for cross-browser visual validation. Click and Clean is also essential for clearing stale cache during development iterations.

Can Chrome extensions help with SEO?

Yes. Check My Links scans pages for broken links that hurt SEO rankings. Wappalyzer helps analyze competitor tech stacks. Lighthouse (built into Chrome DevTools) audits performance, accessibility, and SEO. For visual consistency across browsers, which affects Core Web Vitals and user experience signals, screenshot testing extensions help catch rendering issues that could impact search rankings.

What is the best Chrome extension for debugging?

The Web Developer Toolbar provides the fastest access to common debugging actions: toggling JavaScript, disabling CSS, outlining elements, and inspecting cookies. For deeper debugging, Chrome's built-in DevTools remain the primary tool, but extensions like Ghostery (for third-party script auditing) and Click and Clean (for clearing stale states) complement the debugging workflow effectively.

9 Best Android Emulators for iOS in 2026: What Actually Works (and What Doesn't)

arnabroychowdhury — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:56:32 +0000

iOS does not natively support Android apps. But cloud-based emulators and remote streaming tools can bridge the gap, each with different trade-offs in performance, security, and functionality. Platforms like TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest) take this further by giving developers and QA teams instant browser-based access to Android emulators across 3000+ OS versions and device configurations, without any local setup.

In this guide, I will walk you through 9 online Android emulators that work with iOS in 2026, explain what each does well and where it falls short, and cover when it makes sense to move beyond emulators entirely.

What is an Android Emulator for iOS?

An Android emulator for iOS is a tool that lets you interact with Android apps or the Android operating system from your iPhone or iPad. Unlike traditional emulators that run a virtual OS locally (like Android Studio on a desktop), iOS emulators almost always work through the cloud or screen mirroring.

This is because Apple does not allow third-party operating systems to run natively on iPhones or iPads. iOS's sandboxed architecture prevents any app from gaining the low-level access needed to emulate a full Android environment locally.

So in practice, "Android emulator for iOS" means one of three things:

Cloud-based emulators that run Android on remote servers and stream the interface to your iOS browser or app. You interact with a real Android instance, but it is hosted in the cloud.
Screen mirroring tools that mirror an Android device's screen to your iPhone, letting you view and control it remotely.
Desktop emulators with remote access that run Android on a PC/Mac, and you connect from your iOS device via remote desktop apps.

Each approach has its own strengths and limitations. Cloud solutions offer the most convenience, while desktop-based options give you the most control.

Before You Install Anything: What You Need to Know

There are three critical things to understand about Android emulators on iOS:

Most do not require jailbreaking, but some older or unofficial options do. Jailbreaking your iPhone voids your warranty, exposes your device to security risks, and is generally not recommended for testing purposes.
Performance will vary. Cloud emulators depend on your internet connection. Mirroring tools depend on both devices being on the same network. Neither will match native performance.
Legal and App Store compliance matters. Some emulators operate in gray areas relative to Apple's App Store guidelines. If you are a developer or tester, stick with established, reputable platforms to avoid policy issues.

The 9 Best Android Emulators for iOS in 2026

At a glance:

Tool	Type	Best For	Cost	Jailbreak?
TestMu AI	Cloud emulator platform	Dev/QA testing	Free tier	No
Redfinger	Cloud phone	Multi-account apps	Subscription	No
LDPlayer	Desktop + remote	Gaming on PC	Free	No
MuMu Player	Desktop + remote	Gaming on PC/Mac	Free	No
Appetize	Browser-based cloud	App demos/testing	Free tier	No
NOX Official	Desktop emulator	Power users	Free	No
ApowerMirror	Screen mirroring	Quick access	Free + paid	No
BlueStacks X	Cloud game streaming	Mobile gaming	Free	No
iAndroid	Lightweight simulator	Casual exploration	Free	Varies

1. TestMu AI - Best for Professional App Testing at Scale

If you are a developer or QA engineer who needs to test Android apps from an iOS device, TestMu AI is the most capable option on this list. It is not a consumer emulator for running games. It is an AI-native cloud testing platform that gives you access to a plethora of Android emulator configurations from any browser, including Safari on your iPhone or iPad.

You get real-time interactive testing sessions where you can install APKs, simulate geolocation across 170+ countries, throttle network conditions (3G, 4G, 5G), inspect UI elements with a built-in debugger, and run automated tests through Appium or Espresso. The platform handles the infrastructure, so there is no hardware to manage and no emulator to install locally.

What makes it stand out for iOS users:

Real-Time Testing: Interact live with your app on over 500 Android emulator configurations, simulating real-world usage scenarios.
Automation Testing: Integrate with frameworks like Appium and Espresso to run tests on mobile emulators for app testing.
Geolocation Testing: Test your app's behavior across 170+ global locations to ensure accurate geolocation functionality.
Network Throttling: Simulate various network conditions including 4G and 5G to assess your app's performance under different scenarios.
UI Inspector: Use built-in tools to inspect and debug your app's user interface, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Quick App Uploads: Upload and install APK, AAB, or IPA files directly from the Play Store or App Store for testing.

Best for: Development teams, QA engineers, and anyone who needs reliable, scalable Android testing from an iOS device.

2. Redfinger

Redfinger gives you a full virtual Android device running in the cloud, accessible from your iPhone through their app. It stays active 24/7 even when your phone is off, which makes it useful for running background tasks, managing multiple accounts, or keeping Android apps active without draining your iOS device's battery.

Key strengths: Cross-device access (iOS, Android, Windows, web), multi-app multitasking, always-on cloud instance, and flexible VIP/XVIP subscription tiers.

Best for: Users who need persistent Android access from iOS for productivity or multi-account management.

Limitation: Requires a subscription. Performance depends on internet speed and server load.

3. LDPlayer

LDPlayer is a Windows-based Android emulator that you run on your PC and access from your iPhone via remote desktop apps like Microsoft Remote Desktop or Chrome Remote Desktop. It does not run on iOS directly, but the remote access workflow gives you a full Android environment with strong performance.

Key strengths: Fast performance, customizable game controls, multi-instance support for running several Android environments simultaneously, and broad app compatibility.

Best for: Users who have a Windows PC and want to access a full Android emulator from their iPhone remotely.

4. MuMu Player

MuMu Player, developed by NetEase, is a desktop Android emulator optimized for gaming. Like LDPlayer, you run it on PC or Mac and access it from iOS via remote desktop. It offers enhanced graphics rendering and multi-instance support, making it particularly strong for graphically demanding Android games.

Key strengths: Enhanced graphics, keyboard and mouse mapping for gaming, multi-instance support, and a broad game library.

Best for: Gamers who want to play Android games with better visuals and controls, accessed from iOS remotely.

5. Appetize

Appetize streams Android (and iOS) apps directly in your browser. Upload an APK, get a shareable link, and anyone can interact with the app from their iPhone without installing anything. This makes it excellent for app demos, stakeholder reviews, customer support scenarios, and quick QA checks.

Key strengths: Zero installation, shareable app links, support for both Android and iOS apps, portrait and landscape modes, and touch gesture simulation.

Best for: Product teams running demos, support teams reproducing bugs, and developers sharing builds with stakeholders.

6. NOX Official

NOX is a desktop Android emulator for macOS and Windows known for its customization options. It supports root access, gamepad mapping, file transfer between host and emulator, and multi-app usage. Like LDPlayer and MuMu, iOS access requires a remote desktop setup.

Key strengths: Root access for advanced testing, gamepad and keyboard mapping, multi-app support, and file transfer capabilities.

Best for: Developers and power users who need root-level access to an Android environment.

7. ApowerMirror

ApowerMirror is a screen mirroring tool, not a full emulator. It mirrors your Android phone's screen to your iPhone, letting you view and interact with Android apps from iOS. It is useful when you already have an Android device and want to control it from your iPhone without switching handsets.

Key strengths: Real-time Android-to-iOS mirroring, interactive control of the mirrored screen, annotation tools, and built-in screenshot and recording.

Best for: Users who own both Android and iOS devices and want quick cross-device access.

8. BlueStacks X

BlueStacks X is the cloud-streaming version of the popular BlueStacks emulator. It lets you play Android games directly in your iPhone or iPad browser without any installation. Games run on remote servers and stream to your device, so even older iPhones can handle graphically demanding titles.

Key strengths: Browser-based (no installation), instant cloud launch, cross-device progress sync, and minimal hardware requirements on the iOS side.

Best for: Casual and mid-core gamers who want Android gaming on iOS without complexity.

9. iAndroid

iAndroid provides a basic Android-like interface on iOS. It simulates an Android home screen and lets you explore a handful of Android-style apps. It is more of a novelty or curiosity tool than a functional emulator. It does not run real Android apps or connect to the Play Store.

Key strengths: Simple setup, no system modifications required, lightweight, and gives a basic feel for the Android interface.

Best for: Users curious about the Android UI who want a quick, low-stakes way to explore it.

When Does an Android Emulator for iOS Make Sense?

Not every use case justifies setting up an emulator. Here is when it makes practical sense:

App testing and development: You need to validate how an Android app behaves and you only have iOS hardware. Cloud platforms like TestMu AI and Appetize are built for this.
Accessing Android-exclusive apps: A specific app exists only on Google Play. Cloud phones like Redfinger give you persistent access without buying an Android device.
Gaming: You want to play Android-only games on your iPhone. BlueStacks X and remote desktop setups with LDPlayer or MuMu Player handle this.
Quick demos and stakeholder reviews: You need to show an Android app to someone who only has an iPhone. Appetize's shareable links make this straightforward.

How to Select the Right Android Emulator for iOS

Picking the right emulator starts with knowing what you actually need it for and how much risk you are willing to tolerate.

Start with your use case, not the tool. Testing an app for work is a fundamentally different need than playing an Android game on your iPad. Developers and QA teams should default to cloud-based testing platforms. Gamers should look at cloud streaming or remote desktop setups. Casual users exploring Android can start with lightweight cloud phone services.
Verify App Store compliance. Apple actively removes apps that violate its platform guidelines. Before committing to any emulator, confirm it operates within Apple's rules. Browser-based cloud tools sidestep this issue entirely since they never install anything on your device.
Check real user feedback, not just feature lists. Marketing pages will always look polished. What matters is how the tool performs under real conditions. Look at community forums, Reddit threads, and app store reviews for consistent reports on latency, stability, and customer support responsiveness.
Confirm iOS version support and update frequency. An emulator that worked on iOS 17 may not work on iOS 18. Prioritize tools that receive regular updates and explicitly list supported iOS versions. Cloud-based options are generally version-agnostic since they run in the browser.
Understand the legal boundaries. Emulation itself is not illegal, but how you use it can create issues. Running copyrighted apps outside their intended platform, violating developer terms of service, or using tools that require jailbreaking can expose you to legal and security risks. Stick with established platforms that have clear privacy policies.
Factor in total cost. Some tools are free, some offer free tiers with usage limits, and others require ongoing subscriptions. Match the pricing model to how frequently you will use the tool. For professional testing, the cost of a cloud platform is almost always cheaper than maintaining physical Android devices.

Why Professional Teams Should Test on Real Devices (Not Just Emulators)

Emulators are useful, but they have a ceiling. They simulate Android behavior; they do not replicate it perfectly. Hardware-specific bugs, performance bottlenecks, biometric authentication flows, push notification behavior, and battery and memory constraints all behave differently on real devices versus emulated environments.

For professional development and QA teams, the most reliable approach is testing on real Android devices through a cloud platform. This gives you:

Accurate performance data that reflects what real users experience on actual hardware.
Real biometric testing (fingerprint, face authentication) that emulators cannot replicate.
True network condition testing under real 3G/4G/5G constraints, not simulated approximations.
Hardware-specific bug detection for device fragmentation issues across Samsung, Pixel, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and other manufacturers.
CI/CD integration for automated testing pipelines that validate every build on real devices before release.

TestMu AI'sReal Device Cloud gives teams access to 10,000+ real Android and iOS devices without maintaining a physical device lab. You get Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest support, geolocation testing across 170+ countries, network throttling, UI inspection, and private cloud options for enterprise security requirements.

Final Thoughts

Running Android on an iPhone is not as simple as installing an app. Apple's ecosystem is intentionally closed, and that means every Android emulator for iOS involves some form of workaround, whether that is cloud streaming, remote desktop access, or screen mirroring.

For casual users, cloud solutions like Redfinger and BlueStacks X offer accessible entry points. For developers and QA teams, TestMu AI provides the most complete testing environment with real emulator access, real device cloud, and automation support, all accessible from an iOS browser.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I run Android apps on my iPhone?
Not natively. iOS does not support Android app installation or execution. However, you can use cloud-based Android emulators like TestMu AI, Redfinger, or Appetize to access Android apps from your iPhone through a browser or dedicated app. These tools run Android on remote servers and stream the interface to your iOS device.

What is the best Android emulator for iOS without jailbreak?
For professional testing, TestMu AI is the best option. It runs 500+ Android emulator configurations directly in your browser with no jailbreak, no installation, and no device modifications required. For casual use, BlueStacks X offers browser-based Android gaming, and Appetize provides browser-based app access. All three work without jailbreaking your iPhone.

Is there an Android emulator for iPad?
Yes. Any browser-based solution works on iPad. TestMu AI, Appetize, and BlueStacks X all run in Safari on iPad, giving you access to Android apps or games on the larger screen. Cloud phone services like Redfinger also have iPad-compatible apps.

Are Android emulators safe to use on iOS?
Cloud-based emulators from established providers (TestMu AI, Appetize, BlueStacks X, Redfinger) are safe because they run Android on remote servers, not on your device. Your iPhone is never modified. Avoid any tool that requires jailbreaking, sideloading from unofficial sources, or granting excessive permissions.

Do Android emulators on iOS affect device performance?
Cloud-based emulators have minimal impact on your iPhone's performance since the Android instance runs on a remote server. Your device only handles streaming the interface. Screen mirroring tools like ApowerMirror may use more local resources, and remote desktop connections (for LDPlayer, MuMu, and NOX) depend on your WiFi quality.

Can I test Android apps on iPhone for development?
Yes. TestMu AI is specifically built for this. It provides online Android emulators with real-time interactive sessions, automation framework support (Appium, Espresso), geolocation simulation, network throttling, UI inspection, and CI/CD integration. You can run full development and QA workflows from your iPhone or iPad browser.

Why is it harder to run Android emulators on iOS compared to Windows or macOS?
Apple's iOS is a closed, sandboxed operating system that does not allow third-party apps to access the low-level hardware resources needed for full OS virtualization. Windows and macOS provide more permissive environments for running virtual machines. This is why iOS-compatible Android emulators rely on cloud-based or remote access approaches instead of local emulation.

What is the difference between an Android emulator and a cloud Android device?
An emulator simulates Android software on non-Android hardware (like a PC). A cloud Android device runs actual Android instances on real or virtualized hardware in a data center and streams the interface to your device. Cloud devices (like those offered by TestMu AI and Redfinger) generally provide more accurate behavior than local emulators.

Top 13 QA Manager Skills You Should Have [2024]

arnabroychowdhury — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 09:42:01 +0000

Top 13 QA Manager Skills You Should Have [2024]

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Skills for QA manager is one umbrella which should have a mix of technical & non-technical traits. Finding a combination of both is difficult for organizations to find in one individual, and as an individual to accumulate the combination of both, technical + non-technical traits are a challenge in itself.

Here, I will be talking about the top 13 skills for QA manager which will help you be the leader of an organization’s “dream team”.

Having An Effective Communication Skill
Problem Solving
Hawk-Eyed Gaze Over Analytics
Be Adaptable + Influential
Visualization & Prioritization Of Business Scenarios
Time Management — Crucial in the Agile World
Have a Strong Base in Programming
Strong Negotiation Skills
Be A Team Player
Willingness To Help Your Team Members Grow As An Individual
Be Bold and Confident
Be Skeptical For Traditional Prejudices
Read The Situation — Know When to Step in or Step Aside

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Having An Effective Communication Skill

Excellent written as well as verbal communication is the most pivotal skills for QA managers. As a QA manager, you need to:

Effectively report the overall status of his team to higher management.
Ability to communicate properly with non-technical as well as technical people, especially explaining the technical challenges to the management team.
Should be able to diplomatically deny any request from higher management or the development team when the overall product quality is not perfect for release.

Conducting regular meetings also falls among the duties of a manager.

If the team is large, formal meetings should be conducted regularly where the agenda should be discussed prior to the meeting and a MOM should be sent to the team members after the meeting.
If the team is small, pre and post-meeting MOM is not necessary, a basic stand up meeting will be perfect.

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Problem Solving

Automation testers who were hired did not understand the test cases as they were not detailed enough. Here are the ways to write effective test cases. The tool they used could not support the bulk export of test cases and finally, the team had to answer to the management regarding where their work was blocked.

Problem-solving ability is a crucial skill for QA managers to deal with such unprecedented scenarios effectively.

If your project is developing a web application, the most common issue often faced is cross browser compatibility. If your project is in Agile, cross browser compatibility may not be specified in the requirement but may come as an enhancement request later on, once a demo is scheduled and the stakeholder finds out that the application is failing to render on the certain browser running on specific devices.

It is a best practice to incorporate the execution of cross browser testing in every sprint since it will take a lot of effort to do the testing of the entire application if cross browser compatibility comes later on as an additional request.

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You can deal with such situations with such unprecedented scenarios by:

Training the testers from the beginning to follow standard procedures to avoid less detailed and bulky test cases.
Use mind maps and checklists which can replace the test cases.
Sort the problem according to complexity, start by solving the problem with minimum risk and complexity and move up higher.

For this, you can leverage cloud-based testing platforms like LambdaTest. It is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that allows you perform manual and automated testing at scale on over various browsers, devices, and platforms combinations. With this, you can ensure your websites or web apps are cross-browser and cross-platform compatible.

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Hawk-Eyed Gaze Over Analytics

Another critical skill for QA managers is the ability to analyze the data with a keen eye for monitoring granular level details. Instead of only proving that an application is working fine, a QA manager should guide his team and in fact, work himself to recognize errors that are hidden. As a QA manager, you should be able to detect anomalies and guide your team on how to resolve it along with formulating a resolution strategy. Not only that, having a keen eye for details will also require him to take a quick look at the overall application and check if anything looks off when compared to the requirement specification.

Be Adaptable + Influential

People don’t like change, especially when it comes to the way they are doing things and having no problem while doing their job. However, you must adaptability and influence, are counted as a highly relevant skill for QA managers. As their job is to find out ways that make the team’s work easier and faster. Especially, in the current age of Agile when the stakeholders expect faster delivery, you must bring in a change to ensure that your team does not lag behind in comparison to others. As you bring something new on-board, it is important to encourage your colleagues and teammates to adapt the same for better productivity, individual output, and collective delivery.

Conduct an audit to find out if anything is wrong in the existing process, for example — the team may be facing a problem to maintain test scripts which are quite similar.
Discuss with the team and find out their opinion regarding what needs to change, for example setting up data-driven tests.
The final step is to implement the change and convincing the higher management why this change is required.

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Visualization & Prioritization Of Business Scenarios

A test manager must be able to get an abstract idea from the client provided specs and visualize a real-time business situation. He must also be able to be ready for a knowledge sharing session with either his team or higher management if the situation arises. In short, the manager must also be able to play the role of a business analyst.

Apart from analyzing complex issues, visualization and prioritization of business scenarios are indispensable skills for QA managers. As a QA manager, you must also be able to anticipate a complex issue fluently by taking a look at the requirement. System simulation should fall among the qualities of a good QA manager. He should not focus on a particular defect, instead, he should focus on how a particular defect will impact the bigger picture. Since it is not possible for the entire team to block time for a brainstorming session, the manager should always be ready to help any resource in terms of sharing business knowledge as required.

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Time Management — Crucial in the Agile World

If you want to become a good QA manager, you should be able to adapt yourself as well as your time to keep in pace with the Agile world. You must always be ready to deal with the client whenever any critical change in the requirement arrives.

If your team is not able to deliver the work within the deadline, the blame will come upon you. Time management is a definite skill for QA managers, especially in the current world of DevOps and Agile. You along with your team should always be ready with the deliverables so that the management does not face any need to extend the deadline.

My suggestion to you would be to go for a good project management tools such as Jira, Asana which would offer a dashboard to help everyone understand what every member of the team is doing and when? Using a custom IM(Instant Messaging) web app such as Skype, Slack etc. would also help in collaborating better to pace up the project delivery. Here are top collaboration tools for your software testing team.

Have a Strong Base in Programming

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On the other hand knowledge of Java or web services is needed if your project is using UFT. Apart from that, knowledge of SQL is something that every manager should possess no matter what automation tool your company is using. Apart from that, you should know the core fundamentals of BDD and object-oriented programming. This includes practical knowledge of Python, Ruby, and Perl as well. Here are the top programming languages for automation testing that testers can use.

Strong Negotiation Skills

The situation may often arise when you need to convince the stakeholders or higher management that their expectation from your team is not possible in real time. Let me explain by giving an example.

I’ve faced situations when the delivery deadline was getting nearer and some critical defects were not fixed yet. The development team’s priority was always high to the management and the testing team started getting emails to “cover it up” and pass the test case.

Often the same thing happened when stakeholders used to pick a “defect” even when everything was working fine as per requirement.

In case of the first scenario, a good QA manager should be able to diplomatically fight with the management explaining why his team is doing the right thing and how letting a critical defect go unfixed will impact the product or company’s reputation in the long run.

In the second scenario, the manager’s negotiating skill as a BA will matter most since he will be required to discuss with the stakeholder and point out how everything is working fine as per requirement. Remember, negotiating well is a skill for QA managers that all companies seek to have.

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Be A Team Player

Quality of a good QA manager is to build up a “dream” team where the members, besides being skilled, appreciate each other’s work and behave more like a family where they cooperate, help each other and appreciate others as well. To build up a great team, you must

Organize budget-friendly events that involve team building activities and games.
During the lunch hours, take out your team together for lunch and have discussions on non-technical topics so that the team members become friendlier with you as well as among themselves.
Encourage your QA team to help and cooperate, other teams, especially the development team.
The most organization allows a quarterly or half-yearly budget to the project that is to be spent on events or parties. Even if your company does not have that, encourage your team to organize parties or outings where they can have a good time together not as colleagues, but as friends.

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Willingness To Help Your Team Members Grow As An Individual

This is one skill for QA managers that is often missed out by many. Stress is always going to be a part of your SDLC, due to narrow project deadlines. However, you should not stop individual growth for any resource who is working under your team. As a QA manager, you should remember to help your team members grow in their career. So that eventually when they become a manager, they follow you as an inspiration and help their resources, the same way as you did.

Start by spreading the best practices which you learned in your overall career as a quality analyst or a QA manager.
Organize internal as well as external training. Motivate your team members to attend those training by explaining how it will help in their career.
Work in a group to share the competencies among the entire team.
Also, don’t keep your team members too busy. Allow them some time and let them learn a few things by themselves. Especially if one of your team members is a fresher, start by keeping his workload light with no hurry or deadline so that he can learn to complete the work by himself without taking any help from the seniors.

Be Bold and Confident

Confidence! A primary skill for QA managers around the globe. A manager acts like the leader of the entire team. And self confidence is the base of leadership. Be bold and confident whenever you are about to express your opinion to your superiors or your team. Let’s suppose the stakeholder of your project is making a sudden change request just when delivery time is getting closer. If you are not bold enough to politely refuse his request thinking that what the management or the client will think about you, your entire team will suffer because of the unnecessary work. Even the higher management will not like it that being a QA manager, you accept whatever requests the stakeholders make. Yes, the person on the other side may be superior in terms of designation, but if you think that your decision is right, you must not be afraid to act on it.

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Be Skeptical For Traditional Prejudices

A good relationship between different teams in a project adds a lot of value to the company’s overall work culture. As a QA manager, you can either contribute to an inspiring environment or foster a pessimistic work culture.

A criticized product of the traditional waterfall model is the conventional “testers vs developers” mentality, that separated the process, timeline and role among developers and testers. This mentality still exists with the advancement of continuous testing in DevOps and Agile.

If you keep on fostering this superstitious mentality, a barrier gets created between testers and developers, resulting in conversation barriers in the worst case, which can impact the quality of a product. Discourage if you spot any team member behaving like this and try to find out the root cause of why this belief is existing in your team?

Read The Situation — Know When to Step in or Step Aside

You must trust your team and know what your team members are capable of. They must not always depend on you to guide them and sometimes, they should be able to figure things on their own. A team that is high performing does not need any tool, process or person standing in their way. Those teams always take the initiative and are self-directing. If you step in too often, the testers will get a message that they are required to come to you before taking any decision and ask for permission. This will reduce the team’s moral and impact their work.

However, if you don’t step in when required, the work will definitely be impacted. Use your intuition and take a situational approach to decide where your presence is needed, and thus, help your team accordingly, instead of depending on contemporary procedures.

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So, What Makes A Good QA Manager?

Is it is technical skills, the certifications, years of experience in software testing or keeping up with the current testing trends such as shift-left testing, IoT, automated testing and more!

Well, you need all of that, but most importantly you need an ability to create and work with a creative team where each and every member are equally valuable and irreplaceable for the organization. You need to understand your role as a manager as well as how to effectively use your leadership skills which will not only make our team stand out, but also make you inspiration in the eyes of your team members. All the best!

29 Top Microservice Interview Questions For 2024

arnabroychowdhury — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 11:19:22 +0000

Ever since its inception in 2011, microservices is making huge waves, especially among organizations developing forward-thinking applications. A survey by Nginx shows that 36% of enterprises are currently using Microservices, while another 26% is doing research on how to implement it.

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There are several reasons that will make Microservices to be the perfect domain if you are thinking to switch your technology or trying to learn a new one. Let’s discuss the top 29 Microservices Interview Questions asked to both freshers as well as experienced developers in different interviews.

1. What Is Spring Cloud?

Probably, the first microservices interview question that you may encounter. Spring Cloud in Microservices, is a system that provides integration with external systems. It is a short-lived framework that builds an application in a fast manner. Being associated with the finite amount of data processing, it plays a very important role in Microservice architecture.

For typical use cases, Spring cloud provides some out of the box experience and a set of extensive features mentioned-below:

Versioned and distributed configuration
Discovery of service registration
Service to service calls
Routing
Circuit breakers and load balancing
Cluster state and leadership election
Global locks and distributed messaging

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2. What Is Spring Boot?

Spring boot is a major topic under the umbrella of microservices interview questions. With the new functionalities that have been added, Spring got more complex. Whenever you are starting a new project it is mandatory to add a new build path or Maven dependencies.

In short, you will need to do everything from scratch. Spring Boot is the solution that will help you to avoid all the code configurations. Explaining by a real time example is better while answering this common microservices interview question. If you are cooking a dish, the ingredients can be considered to be Spring. While Spring Boot is the completely cooked recipe.

3. How Do You Override A Spring Boot Project’s Default Properties?

This can be done by specifying the properties in application.properties.
For example — In Spring MVC applications, you have to specify the suffix and prefix. This can be done by entering the properties mentioned below in application.properties.

For suffix — spring.mvc.view.suffix: .jsp
For prefix – spring.mvc.view.prefix: /WEB-INF/

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4. Role Of Actuator In Spring Boot

It is one of the most important features, which helps you to access the current state of an application that is running in production environment. There are multiple metrics which can be used to check the current state. They also provide endpoints of restful web services which can be simply used to check the different metrics.

5. How Is Spring Security Implemented In A Spring Boot Application?

Minimal configuration is needed for implementation. All you need to do is, add spring-boot-starter-security starter in the file pom.xml. You will also need to create a Spring config class that will override the required method while extending the WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter to achieve security in the application. Here is an example code for the same:

package com.gkatzioura.security.securityendpoints.config;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.builders.HttpSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter;
@Configuration
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.authorizeRequests()
            .antMatchers("/welcome").permitAll()
            .anyRequest().authenticated()
            .and()
            .formLogin()
            .permitAll()
            .and()
            .logout()
            .permitAll();
    }
}

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6. Which Embedded Containers Are Supported By Spring Boot?

Whenever you are creating a Java Application, deployment can be done by 2 methods:

By using an application container that is external
You can also embed the container inside your jar file.

Spring Boot contains Jetty, Tomcat and undertow servers, all of which are embedded.

Jetty — Used in a wide number of projects, Eclipse Jetty can be embedded in frameworks and application servers, tools as well as clusters.
Tomcat — Apache Tomcat is an open source JavaServer pages implementation which works well with embedded systems.
Undertow — A flexible and prominent web server that uses small single handlers to develop a web server.

7. What Do You Mean By End-To-End Testing Of Microservices?

End-to-End testing validates all the processes in the workflow to check if everything is working properly as expected. It also ensures that the system works in a unified manner, thereby satisfying the business requirement.

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8. What Is Semantic Monitoring?

It combines monitoring of the entire application along with automated tests. The primary benefit of Semantic Monitoring is to find out the factors which are more profitable to your business.
Semantic monitoring along with service layer monitoring approaches monitoring of microservices from a business point of view. Once an issue is detected, they allow faster isolation and bug triaging, thereby reducing the main time required to repair. It triages the service layer and transaction to figure out the transactions affected by availability or poor performance.

9. How Can You Set Up Service Discovery?

There are multiple ways to set up service discovery. I’ll choose the one that I think to be most efficient, Eureka by Netflix. It is a hassle-free procedure that does not weigh much on the application.

Plus, it supports numerous types of web applications. Eureka configuration involves 2 steps — Client configuration and server configuration. Client configuration can be done easily by using the property files. In the classpath, Eureka searches for eureka-client.properties.

It also searches for overrides caused by the environment in property files that are environment-specific.

For server configuration, you have to configure the client first. Once that is done, the server fires up a client which is used to find other servers. The Eureka server, by default, uses the Client configuration to find the peer server.

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10. Why Would You Opt For Microservices Architecture?

A very common microservices interview question which you should be ready for! There are plenty of pros that are offered by Microservices architecture. Here are a few of them:

Microservices can adapt easily to other frameworks or technologies.
Failure of a single process does not affect the entire system.
Provides support to big enterprises as well as small teams.
Can be deployed independently and in relatively less time.

11. Why Would You Need Reports & Dashboards In Microservices?

Reports and dashboards are mainly used to monitor and upkeep microservices. There are multiple tools that help to serve this purpose. Reports and dashboards can be used to:

find out which microservices expose what resources.
find out the services which are impacted whenever changes in a component occur.
provide an easy point which can be accessed whenever documentation is required.
Versions of the components which are deployed.
To obtain a sense of maturity and compliance from the components.

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12. Why Do People Hesitate In Using Microservices?

I have seen many of us fumble over this question. After all, we are appearing for microservices interview question to be hired as a Microservices architect, so acknowledging cons could always be a little tricky. Here is the answer:

Requires heavy investment — Microservices demand a great deal of collaboration. Since your teams are working independently, they should be able to synchronize well at all times.
Heavy architecture set up — The system is distributed, the architecture is heavily involved.
Excessive planning for handling operations overhead — You need to be ready for operations overhead if you are planning to use Microservices architecture.
Autonomous staff selection — Skilled professionals are needed who can support microservices that are distributed heterogeneously.

13. How Does PACT Work?

PACT is an open source tool. It helps in testing the interactions between consumers and service providers. However, it is not included in the contract, increasing the reliability of the application.
The consumer service developer starts by writing a test which defines a mode of interaction with the service provider. The test includes the provider’s state, the request body and the response that is expected. Based on it, PACT creates a stub against which the test is executed. The output is stored in a JSON file.

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14. Define Domain Driven Design

The main focus is on the core domain logic. Complex designs are detected based on the domain’s model. Involves collaboration with domain experts constantly to resolve issues related to the domain and improve the model of the application. While answering this microservices interview question, you will also need to mention the core fundamentals of DDD. They are

DDD focuses mostly on domain logic and the domain itself.
Complex designs are completely based on the domain’s model.
To improve the design of the model and fix any emerging issues, DDD constantly works in collaboration with domain experts.

15. What is Coupling and Cohesion?

The coupling can be considered to be the measurement of strength between the dependencies of a component. A good Microservices application design always consists of low coupling and high cohesion.

Following the previous question, often the interviewer will ask about cohesion. It is also another measurement unit. More like a degree to which the elements inside a module remain bonded together.

If you are appearing for microservices interview questions then it is imperative to keep in mind that an important key to design microservices is a composition of low coupling along with high cohesion. When loosely coupled, a service knows very little about other. This keeps the services intact. In high cohesion, it becomes possible to keep all the related logic in a service. Otherwise, the services will try to communicate with each other, impacting the overall performance.

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16. What Is OAuth?

Open Authorization Protocol, otherwise known as OAuth, helps to access client applications using third-party protocols like Facebook, GitHub etc via HTTP. You can also share resources between different sites without the requirement of credentials.

OAuth allows the account information of the end user to be used by a third party like Facebook while keeping it secure (without using or exposing the user’s password). It acts more like an intermediary on the user’s behalf while providing a token to the server for accessing the required information.

17. Why Do We Need Containers For Microservices?

To manage a microservice based application, containers are the easiest alternative. It helps the user to individually deploy and develop. You can also use Docker to encapsulate the microservice in the image of a container. Without any additional dependencies or effort, microservices can use these elements.

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18. What Are The Ways To Access RESTful Microservices?

This is another one of the frequently asked microservices interview questions and answers is how to access RESTful Microservices? You can do that by 2 methods –

Using a rest template that is load balanced.
Using multiple microservices.

19. What Are Some Major Roadblocks For Microservices Testing?

Talking about the cons, here is another one of the microservices interview questions you may be ready for, will be around the challenges faced while testing microservices.

Tester should have a thorough understanding of all the inbound and outbound processes before he starts writing the test cases for integration testing.
When independent teams are working on different functionalities, collaboration can prove to be quite a struggling task. It can be tough to find an idle time-window to perform a complete round of regression testing.
With an increasing number of microservices, the complexity of the system also increases.
During the transition from monolithic architecture, testers must ensure that there is no disruption between the internal communication among the components.

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20. Common Mistakes Made While Transitioning To Microservices

Not only on development, but mistakes also lies on the process side often. And any experienced interviewer will have this under the queue for microservices interview questions. Some of the common mistakes are

Often the developer fails to outline the current challenges.
Rewriting the programs that are already existing.
Responsibilities, timeline, and boundaries not clearly defined.
Failing to implement and figure out the scope of automation from the very beginning.

21. What Are The Fundamentals Of Microservices Design?

This is probably one of the most frequently asked microservices interview questions. Here is what you need to keep in mind while answering to it:

Define a scope
Combine loose coupling with high cohesion
Create a unique service which will act as an identifying source, much like a unique key in a database table
Creating the correct API and take special care during integration.
Restrict access to data and limit it to the required level
Maintain a smooth flow between requests and response
Automate most processes to reduce time complexity
Keep the number of tables to a minimum level to reduce space complexity
Monitor the architecture constantly and fix any flaw when detected.
Data stores should be separated for each microservices.
For each microservices, there should be an isolated build.
Deploy microservices into containers.
Servers should be treated as stateless.

You can also follow this article explaining 9 fundamentals to a successful microservice design.

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22. Where Do We Use WebMVC Test Annotation?

WebMvcTest is used for unit testing Spring MVC applications. As the name suggests, it focuses entirely on Spring MVC components. For example,
@WebMvcTest(value = ToTestController.class, secure = false):
Here, the objective is to launch only ToTestController. Until the unit test has been executed, other mappings and controllers will not be launched.

23. What Do You Mean By Bounded Context?

A central pattern usually seen in domain driven design, Bounded Context is the main focus of the strategic design section of DDD. It is all about a deal with large teams and models. DDD works with large models by disintegrating them into multiple bounded context. While it does that, it also explains the relationship between them explicitly.

24. What Are The Different Types Of Two-Factor Authentication?

There are 3 types of credentials required for performing a two-factor authentication.

A thing that you know — like password or pin or screen lock pattern.
A physical credential that you have — like OTP or phone or an ATM card, in other words, any kind of credential that you have in an external or third-party device.
Your physical identity — like voice authentication or biometric security like a fingerprint or eye scanner.

25. What Is A Client Certificate?

This is a type of digital certificate usually used by client systems for making a request that is authenticated by a remote server. It plays an important role in authentication designs that are mutual and provides strong assurance of the identity of a requester. However, you should have a fully configured back-end service for authenticating your client certificate.

26. What Did The Law Stated By Melvin Conway Implied?

You may have this one under the interviewer’s checklist for microservices interview questions. Conway’s law stated “organizations which design system are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

The interviewer may ask a counter microservices interview question like how is the Melvin Conway Law related to microservices. Well, some loosely coupled APIs form the architecture of microservices. The structure is well suited to how a small team is implementing components which are autonomous. This architecture makes an organization much more flexible in restructuring its work process.

27. How to Configure Spring Boot Application Logging?

Spring Boot comes with added support for Log4J2, Java Util Logging, and Logback. It is usually pre-configured as console output. They can be configured by only specifying logging.level in the application.properties file.

logging.level.spring.framework=Debug

28. How Would You Perform Security Testing of Microservices?

Before answering this microservices interview question, explain to the interviewer that microservices cannot be tested as a whole. You will need to test the pieces independently.There are 3 common procedures

Code scanning — To ensure that any line of code is bug-free and can be replicated.
Flexibility — The security solution should be flexible so that it can be adjusted as per the requirements of the system.
Adaptability — The security protocols should be flexible and updated to cope up with the new threats by hackers or security breaches.

You can also follow this blog explaining the influence of Microservices architecture on security.

29. What is Idempotence and How is it Used?

Idempotence refers to a scenario where you perform a task repetitively but the end result remains constant or similar.

Idempotence is mostly used as a data source or a remote service in a way that when it receives more than one instructions, it processes only one instruction.

That’s all from our side. However, if you are seriously thinking about a technology switch, don’t depend on these microservices interview questions alone. Since experienced interviewers will also ask cross questions to check how much in-depth knowledge you have. Go for courses or online tutorials and study about Microservices in details so that you can answer the questions stated above along with connected questions as well.

Best 48 Web Development Tools Of All Time

arnabroychowdhury — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 12:50:00 +0000

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Best 49 Web Development Tools Of All Time

arnabroychowdhury — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 08:55:18 +0000

For web developers, there is no shortage of resources. Be it text editors, learning materials, build tools, deployment tools, testing tools, or any other category that can ease their lives as web developers!. However, if you are starting a new project, confusion may arise regarding the best-suited tool for your team.

To clear this confusion, we have come up with this detailed post covering the 49 best web development tools that developers should. Web development tools is a detailed subject encompassing multiple facets like development, testing, etc. hence, we have covered the tools in categories based on their usage.

So, let’s get started…

IDEs for Developers

Text editor or IDE is one of the most important web development tools. Because obviously, you need a tool for coding, don’t you? So let’s kick start this blog with this most important product category.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code ranks as one of the most popular IDE for web developers as per the State of JS 2020 survey. This IDE is quite powerful and comes with built-in support for JavaScript, NodeJS, and TypeScript developers. It also supports multiple extensions for C#, Python, PHP, and C++.

This open-source tool from Microsoft has the following popular features:

Text auto-completion with IntelliSense
Syntax highlighting
Easy navigation to functions
Built-in cmd terminal, making it easier for Node, Angular, and React developers to perform their entire work in a single IDE
Boilerplates and templates
Seamless integration with GitHub

Vim

Vim is a reliable and stable text editor compatible across Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms. Developers can generate scripts with just a few commands using the Vim editor.

You can use this editor from:

Command-line interface
Standalone application in GUI

We have added Vim to our list of best web development tools as Vim still ranks among the top 3 IDEs in the StateofJS survey. However, it should be noted that although it is one of the advanced IDEs that we are listing down, it does not mean that the tool is user-friendly.

The learning curve is a bit steep, and you must be ready to learn a whole new set of features that are different from the other popular IDEs.

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Webstorm

If you want to unleash the full power of the JavaScript ecosystem, the ideal choice for you is Webstorm. Here are the top features that you might find useful:

On-the-fly error detection
Smooth navigation across code
Ability to refactor JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, LESS, SASS, etc.
Intelligent way of code compilation

Apart from these features, you can also run and debug your automation scripts using Jest, Mocha, Karma, or Protractor. And finally, you will get a simplified way to work with GitHub or Mercurial. Give this open-source tool a try, and you will discover other interesting features as well.

Sublime Text

Initially released in 2008, Sublime has been one of the most powerful and lightweight IDEs for web developers. The IDE works across multiple platforms and offers a range of customization options.

This is what you can achieve using Sublime:

The application is significantly fast and has an intuitive interface
Supports code navigation as well as function & symbol navigation
You can highlight syntaxes in React or ES6 using the Babel plugin
Rich plugin ecosystem with a plethora of awesome plugins like SublimeLinter, Sidebar Enhancements, DocBlockr, etc.

Notepad ++

Notepad++ is the most popular code editor when it comes to the advanced IDE category. This open-source tool comes in a very compact package. Notepad++ IDE consumes significantly lesser resources in comparison to the other IDEs available in the market.

The most important factor that makes this IDE a part of our best web development tools is translating the interface into more than 80 languages. This level of internationalization is not present in many IDEs. What if you don’t find your native language on the list? Well, in that case, you can easily translate the tool into your native language.

Browser Plugins

Browser plugins are primarily used for performing smaller tasks in the world of web development tools. However, be it inspecting the color code of an element or validating the markup of a code, the importance of plugins cannot be ignored. This is the primary reason why we have added browser plugins to our ultimate list of web development tools.

Let’s talk about some plugins that you can use for your project.

Githunt

Developers are always looking for inspiration to do better coding. Githunt is a React-based plugin for Chrome that allows you to explore the most starred projects hosted on GitHub.

By default, you will get a list of the most popular projects curated on a weekly basis. You can also sort the projects based on their daily, monthly, or yearly popularity. You can also customize the view (i.e., list or grid) and apply filters across multiple languages if you do not find a popular project in your native language.

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WhatFont

WhatFont Chrome extension can be your go-to extension if you port a new site from a legacy codebase. The plugin also supports Google Font API and Typekit.

Just click on the extension and hover on the text whose font family you intend to investigate. This plugin will tell the font size, font weight, and font family. With more than a million users, it is one of the most popular tools used by web developers.

LambdaTest Chrome Extension

The availability of many browsers and platforms has made it important to test your website on different browsers & platform combinations. As a business (or even a developer), it is not wise to invest heavily in a local testing infrastructure. This is where a platform like LambdaTest can be helpful as it provides you a cloud-based Selenium Grid to test on 2000+ browsers, devices, and operating systems online.

With LambdaTest Chrome Extension, you can access the LambdaTest interface and perform cross browser testing of your web app simultaneously across multiple browsers and platforms online. This extension helps developers increase productivity, reduce testing time, achieve faster TTM, and improve overall browser coverage. Here are some of the most exciting features of LambdaTest Chrome Extension:

Real-time testing across 2000+ browsers
Flexibility to take direct screenshots of up to 25 different browsers and operating systems online
Scheduling screenshots using preferred date, time, and configurations
Perform Geolocation testing across 53 locations across the globe

Check out our detailed video tutorial on the LambdaTest Chrome extension for Live and Automated Screenshot Testing:

This Playwright Automation tutorial will guide you through the setup of the Playwright framework, which will enable you to write end-to-end tests for your future projects.

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Just creating a template with buttons, images, or carousels is not enough for designing a winning website. We also need a default text to mimic an actual site before delivering the template to the client.

You must have seen “Lorem ipsum” default text in UI templates. Lorem Ipsum Generator is a useful plugin that provides a quick and easy way to customize and generate default text that compliments your amazing design. Not only the text, but you also get the option to customize the count of lines in each paragraph along with line breaks.

ColorPick Eyedropper

ColorPick Eyedropper is a selector meant for inspecting web pages. You can use it to easily identify the Hex color code of any web page (or a particular element on the page). In addition, the Zoom feature lets you inspect the line color or border color (even if it is as small as 1 px).

Once you click on the extension and activate it, your mouse cursor will convert into a crosshair. After that, just hover on the section you want to identify, and on the right-hand side of the screen, you will get the color code in RGB format and the hex color format.

HTML Validator

Wondering what an easy and quick way to validate markup within the web browser is? HTML validators can come in super handy in such scenarios. Though there are a number of validators out there, HTML Validator is the most popular out of the lot!. To use an HTML validator, you just need to: –

Install the plugin
Open a developer console on the page
Navigate to the HTML validator tab
Get insights into the HTML warnings and errors present on the page page

JSON Viewer

We normally get the minified version of JSONs when doing compilation or when data of a website is generated dynamically., Wouldn’t it be great if you can hierarchically see the JSON data? Well, if you have a lot of time, you can work with raw data, but you surely do not have infinite time in your hands!

However, if you are looking for a quicker way to filter a small field in a huge JSON file, this addon accelerates product development. With over 800,000 users, the JSON Viewer plugin has a rating of 4/5 and is well-known for its ease of use and reliability.

React Developer Tools

This plugin is useful if you are developing your website using the React framework. You can inspect the React library using this tool.

After installing the React Developer Tools extension, you would see two icons on the toolbar of your Chrome browser. One is for Profiler, and the other one is for Components. Profiler gives you detailed insights into the performance data. On the other hand, Components shows details about the React library being used on the page. In a nutshell, this plugin is a must-have for any React developer.

Dimension

Mouse hover is one of the effective ways to inspect paddings or margins in UX tools like Zeplin. Wouldn’t it be useful if we have a similar tool for browsers as well? Dimensions is a plugin that comes as a solution in the Chrome browser.

Dimensions can be used to find the dimension, spacing, or gap between elements you see on a web page. After installation, you will find a crosshair icon on the toolbar. Just click on it, and you will see a similar icon on the screen. Move it around the object you want to measure. The exact dimensions will appear on the icon. The tool is simple but quite effective for developers and one of the top contenders in our best web development tools list.

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Testing Tools

The most important activity that runs parallel to development is testing, so we have added them to our list of best web development tools. Finally, we will discuss and list down some popular tools that aim to enhance the quality and further accelerate your web application development.

LambdaTest

Nowadays, the definition of an amazing web application or website is quite exhaustive. However, along with the speed and great technology, user experience also plays quite an important role.

In this digital-first era, your website (or web app) must perform exceptionally well on a range of browsers, devices, and operating systems. To realize this perfect experience, you need to perform cross browser testing.

LambdaTest provides you the option to test your website across 2,000+ device-browser-OS combinations, all with different resolutions. Furthermore, the tests are performed in real-time on the cloud. As a result, you can gain a competitive advantage by delivering a unified user experience, faster time-to-market, along with ensuring top-notch product quality. Here are some of the amazing features of the LambdaTest platform:

Live Interactive Browser Compatibility Testing
Automation Testing using Selenium and Cypress frameworks
Parallel Testing in Selenium and Cypress for executing the faster go-to-market strategy
Automated Screenshot Testing & Geolocation Testing
Detailed test logs (and reports) for faster bug fixes
Supports integration with a large number of project management, CI/CD, & communication tools.

Selenium IDE

Are you looking for a UI-driven record and playback tool? If yes, then Selenium IDE for automation testing is the right choice for you. Selenium IDE is available for Chrome and Firefox browsers.

You can export the created test into a script. It also offers easy debugging by setting breakpoints. The tool also offers multiple strategies for locating a recorded element and has a self-healing feature. Selenium IDE in Selenium 4 also lets you export the recorded tests as code for all official language bindings like Java, C#, Python, etc.

Which are the most wanted automation testing tools that have climbed the top of the ladder so far? Let’s take a look.

Katalon Studio

Katalon is the perfect tool if you are looking for a middle ground between codeless and code-based testing tools. The tool is an all-in-one solution for test automation that comes with the following features:

Productive IDE that can generate tests for all operating systems and platforms
Record and store all UI elements, thereby enhancing reusability
Offers a codeless experience
Seamless integration into the testing ecosystem

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SoapUI

Built for both testers as well as developers, SoapUI is an open-source tool that offers load, functional, security, as well as mocking testing. With an easy-to-use GUI, this tool is one of the best web development tools if you are a beginner in API testing and want to validate SOAP and REST-based web services.

Here are the major features of the SoapUI framework:

Ability to create complex testing scenarios with drag and drop tests
Ability to create load tests based on existing API tests
Mimic web services without waiting for them to be completed
Engaging open-source community

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Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is another popular open-source tool meant for testing the performance of static and dynamic web applications. For example, you can use the tool to simulate a heavy load on a single (or a group of servers), objects, or network.

The objective is to test the application’s strength or analyze how the site performs under different loads. The tool is portable, and you can run headless tests from any Java-compatible operating system like Mac, Windows, or Linux.

Test Automation Frameworks

Test automation frameworks are becoming important with each passing day to increase the team’s efficiency and speed. Especially at present, when customers are all about the Agile way of faster delivery. Automation Testing in Agile accelerates the process of software development, testing, and delivery.

Let’s discuss some of the popular test automation frameworks that we have added to our list of best web development tools.

Robot Framework

When it comes to test automation framework, the first that comes to our mind is the Robot framework in Python. It is a generic open-source framework primarily meant for test automation.

It is an open-source tool where tests are written in Gherkin, a language with human-readable keywords.

The framework is independent of operating systems and applications.

Cypress

If you want a complete end-to-end experience while testing your web application, Cypress is the ideal framework.

Here are some of the awesome features of the Cypress framework:

Simple installation without any additional dependencies
Preferred for end-to-end testing of modern web applications
Feature-rich automation dashboard
Reduced (or minimal) network flakiness
Cypress testing on cloud lets you run cross-browser tests at scale

WebdriverIO

Are you looking for an automation framework that allows you to write your scripts in JavaScript while leveraging Selenium?

Unlike Selenium, if you are using Webdriver, you don’t need to write any code from scratch. This framework comes with all the resources you need to develop a scalable and sustainable test suite.

The open-source framework will certainly make you happy if your team comprises JavaScript developers and coding enthusiasts. In addition, the testing community widely uses the WebDriverIO framework to perform automation testing. Refer to the detailed WebDriverIO Tutorial to get started with automation testing with the WebDriverIO framework.

Jasmine

With the shift-left approach becoming more mainstream in testing, the popularity of behavior-driven frameworks (BDD) is growing with each passing day.

Jasmine is a BDD-based framework that can be used for testing your JavaScript application. The framework comes with a clean human-readable syntax that lets you write automation tests with ease.

Since it is a BDD framework, people from all the departments (not limited to only technical departments) can participate in creating and maintaining test scenarios.

Here are, 30 most wanted test automation tools that have climbed the top of the ladder so far. Let’s take a look.

Cucumber

When it comes to BDD, what if I told you that there is a framework that offers testing and collaboration between teams? If that is your requirement, you should give Cucumber a spin.

Here are some of the power-packed features of the Cucumber framework:

Writing human-readable test cases that follow the BDD approach
Improved collaboration between teams
Work in small and rapid iterations, thereby improving communication between the team members

Not only that, CucumberStudio connects with your source control tool like Git.

Karma

Are you looking for a framework where your team should worry less about the configuration to write efficient test scripts? In that case, you should try out Karma.

Here are some of the awesome features of Karma:

Control of the entire workflow from the IDE
Flexibility to run automation test scripts on real devices like tablets, phones, or even headless instances like PhantomJS
Open-source tool with a large community
Supports Continuous Integration with Jenkins and Travis
Option to run tests with Jasmine, QUnit, or any other adapter

Serenity

Serenity is an open-source BDD framework meant for writing acceptance tests for your web applications.

Here are some of the major features of Serenity:

Flexibility to write maintainable and scalable test scenarios
Generation of illustrative and highly detailed reports
Ease of mapping automated tests to the requirements

Frontend Frameworks

Are you developing a static website? If so, simple HTML, CSS will do the job. However, nowadays, almost everyone prefers dynamic single-page websites. Let’s discuss a few frameworks ranked in the State of JS 2020 survey that lets developers create robust and scalable JavaScript-based web applications.\

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React

Created by Facebook, React is one of the most popular web development frameworks. Ranked top in the State of JS 2020 survey, this framework is a favorite among all developers who work on single-page web applications.

With the release of React Native, a cross-platform framework for mobile development, React is also gaining traction in the mobile development market. The framework has a virtual DOM, a stable way of writing codes with a number of libraries, and has a rating of over 169k stars in GitHub.

Angular

Introduced by Google in 2010, when the rewritten version Angular 2.0 became more stable, the framework came into the limelight and started getting the attention of huge players in the industry.
At the time of writing this blog, Angular 12 was the latest version of the framework. Nevertheless, the framework maintains its position among the popular ones as per the State of JS survey.

Here are some of the major features of the Angular framework:

2-way data binding
Dependency injection
Use of TypeScript
Improved Flexibility
Easy maintenance

Vue

Vue is popular since it comes with a rich feature set with a very small memory footprint (i.e., 29KB).

Like Angular, you can also work with 2-way data binding. The official site of Vue has detailed documentation which makes it easier for you to learn. However, vue can be a bit complex in case you are using it for a large-scale project.

Svelte

Though the syntax of Svelte aligns closely to web standards, its approach is different from basic HTML, JS, or CSS.

The design approach of Svelte is similar to Python. Although complex, it is still popular among developers because of its aesthetically pleasing appearance and clear-to-read templating based on HTML. During compilation, the framework optimizes the code and incorporates changes during runtime with minimal overhead.

Preact

What if you want to use React for small projects? The alternative is Preact that comes with a smaller memory footprint (i.e., 3KB)

It is based on the ES6 framework, and because of its small size, performance is not an issue. Preact comes with a fast virtual DOM. It uses standard attributes of HTML, and you can share reusable components like UI elements or data providers.

The major downside is that it has a smaller developer community

Ember

Ember is one of the best frameworks for developing client-side web applications. It is considered as the one-stop solution for handling application flow and data management.

Apps developed using Ember have a high performance since the framework can simultaneously handle multiple tasks. In addition, Ember has its asset pipeline, services, and route, thereby providing you a full-stack framework for development.

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LitElement

Though LitElement is not that popular like Angular or React, it is still preferred due to its ability to create faster and lightweight web components. Therefore, it is ideal if you are working on small projects.

You can also use the components in any CMS or a framework like Vue or React. Moreover, as you can use JavaScript, you no longer need to learn any new language for the template.

AlpineJS

AlpineJS is another popular framework meant for handling small projects. The framework is popular for apps that run on the server-side. This is because the framework leaves a small footprint in the app.

With a size of about 4KB, it works great with the current templates. DOM manipulation is a breezy task with AlpineJS.

You can also harness the reactive and declarative nature of Angular, Vue, or React at a lower resource consumption using Alpine.

Repository and Collaboration

Development and testing are important, but collaboration is increasingly important for teams. Let’s discuss some popular platforms we’ve added to our ultimate list of web development tools that enhance team collaboration. We have also collated a list of the top code repository tools.

Jira

If you are using Agile methodology, you might’ve surely come across Jira. It is considered one of the best platforms for cross-team collaboration. It has gained more prominence since the time remote work has picked up due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some of the major features of Jira:

Powerful features with ease of customization
Easy-to-manage workflows
Flexibility to track changes in the project
Provision of a centralized dashboard through which you can share data with other team members

Asana

Asana allows you to assign tasks to other team members, check deadlines and assign followers to your projects.

Major features of Asana:

Assign and organize development activities that you and your team can view in a list
Timeline feature lets you map work according to time
The rich and interactive dashboard helps your team to focus on priority tasks

GitHub

Probably the largest platform for hosting code repositories, with GitHub, you can manage code, projects and develop software with other developers.

GitHub allows you to:

Write code in a better way
Collaborate with teams
Execute collaborative team reviews
Provision of Secure Private repositories
Access control to the checked-in repositories

Bitbucket

Offered by the creators of Jira, Altissian comes a popular repository, Bitbucket. The repository offers you unlimited private codebases for Git or Mercurial.

Features of Bitbucket:

Approve code that is pending for review
Create and manage pull requests
Secure workflow and flexible deployment models
Integration with JIRA

Trello

Trello is a small but useful tool for collaboration, especially for smaller projects. The tool offers you the option to organize projects on boards. At a glance, the boards tell you what is going on, who is working on what, and more.

Imagine Trello to be a whiteboard where you have added a list of sticky notes, each note having a task and one or more team members assigned for each task. Now imagine each sticky note having an attachment of photos, data sources, documents, and a section where you can add comments. A portable whiteboard that you can access anywhere, from any device.

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Basecamp

Basecamp is a collaboration tool like JIRA or Asana. Using this tool, people manage their projects while communicating with the team members. You can use the tool to keep track of your work, assign tasks, set up and view deadlines, plan discussions, and more.

Although it is considered a project management tool, we can categorize it as a collaboration tool because of its flexibility to its users.

Jenkins

CI/CD has become a must-have in today’s hyper-competitive environment. Jenkins is one such tool that leads the race in the CI/CD market. It offers multiple plugins to build, deploy and automate a project.

Here are the major features of Jenkins:

Open-source tool that comes as a self-contained program based on Java
Easy installation and configuration
Can be used as a simple CI server, with the flexibility to convert into a CD hub for a project
Distributed architecture of Jenkins allows you to set it up across multiple machines and execute a faster code build, test, deployment.

Other Notable Tools

As I have noted earlier, the count of best web development tools is almost endless. Let’s close our post by discussing responsive testing tools, task runners, CI/CD tools as well as some browser-based development tools that make a developer’s life easier by reducing repetitive tasks.

LT Browser

There are many responsive testing tools available in the market, some with an advanced set of features. LT Browser is one of them and can be used to test various device viewports simultaneously. You can open a website in the LT Browser and perform live testing across 50+ pre-installed device viewports. This freemium tool is built for the purpose of enabling rapid/accurate testing of websites and providing quick feedback to developers. Some of the features include:

Allows responsive testing on multiple viewports like mobile, tablets, desktops, and laptops
Generates performance reports of websites powered by Google lighthouse
Supports different network conditions while testing
Compares devices on multiple viewports simultaneously
Supports Hot reloading
Allows you to take full-page screenshots
Records test session

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Grunt

The main reason for using Grunt is automation. The less work that you can do while performing repetitive tasks means the more time you can invest in finding out innovative solutions to implement in your project.

Be it code compilation, unit testing, linting, or other tasks, free-to-use Grunt is a popular task runner who can do most mundane tasks for your team with less effort. Moreover, the ecosystem of Grunt is evolving at a rapid pace. With a huge count of plugins, you can choose the ones you need and automate almost anything.

Gulp

Another popular task runner like Grunt, Gulp uses the flexibility of JavaScript and automates slow tasks to build an efficient pipeline. You can use Gulp to write your own code and perform a chain of tasks with a single command.

Since the tool is open source, there are lots of community-built plugins. You can use them to get quickly started with Gulp. Each plugin does a small amount of work! Collectively using them allows you to build a chain of tasks that can give you the desired result.

Docker

Docker makes our life easier by taking away the mundane and repetitive configuration tasks that we perform throughout the development cycle of a web application.

Here are the major features of Docker:

Flexibility to develop a unique app on Mac and Windows
Easy integration with popular tools like GitHub, CircleCI, or VS Code
Seamless collaboration with other team members, helping you publish images in the Docker Hub
Deliver multiple applications and run all of them in your environment, including design, staging, testing, and production
Run Selenium tests with Docker for expedited automation testing

Sourcetree

Are you unfamiliar with the command-line interface and the commands needed to push and pull code from a GitHub repository? Sourcetree brings you a free Git client for both Mac and Windows.

With Sourcetree, you can visualize your code, find changes and conflicts, and resolve them with ease. The tool works for both Git and Mercurial. You can visualize the latest code, compare your changes, and update code with confidence. If you are not that much confident with Git, you can learn it easily with a set of tutorials that covers merging, branching, and many more.

GitLab

GitLab is an open-source DevOps platform that lets you view your project, collaborate with other team members, and ship at a faster pace.

Major features of GitLab:

Single interface, data store, and conversation thread making it easy to use the tool
Scalable and powerful end-to-end automated operation resulting in improved efficiency within the team
Highly secure tool that lets you unearth vulnerabilities and code quality issues.

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Codepen

Suppose you have just gone through new web technology and want to test how it works for your project. You don’t need to worry about setting up an environment for just a simple trial run since Codepen can help you in that area!

It is a social development environment where UI developers build and deploy their work with a readily configured environment. You can browse and fork through multiple readily available codes, helping you learn with the community.

JSFiddle

Just like Codepen, JSFiddle is another great tool for testing and sharing your code. You don’t even need to register to try out a code. The online tool offers you three sections to individually type HTML, CSS, and JS code.

The site will take care of the build and deployment in real-time. It also offers color-coded syntax and a tidy-up feature that properly formats the code with appropriate spaces. Moreover, you can browse fiddles published by others and learn new stuff. So, the next time someone in your team gets stuck in implementing a new thing, create a fiddle and share it with them to make your team’s task easier.

Wrapping It Up

We hope that you will find the tools that we listed to be quite useful. Choose the one that you need based on your project and your stakeholder and team’s requirement. If you are working on a large project, go for frameworks like Angular or React and collaboration tools like Jira. If your project is small, you can give Trello or Preact a try.

Let us know if you have come across similar and useful tools that consume fewer resources while reducing your workload.

Top 17 Software Testing Blogs to Look Out For in 2019

arnabroychowdhury — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 08:37:29 +0000

Software testing is one of the widely aspired domain in the current age. Finding out bugs can be a lot of fun, and not only for testers, but it’s also for everyone who wants their application to be free of bugs. However, apart from online tutorials, manuals, and books, to increase your knowledge, find a quick help to some problem or stay tuned to all the latest news in the testing domain, you have to rely on software testing blogs. In this article, we shall discuss top 17 software testing blogs which will keep you updated with all that you need to know about testing.

Guru99

If you are looking for a software testing blog to learn something new and enhance your skillset, Guru99 is the solution. It brings you a vast repository of knowledge regarding performance testing, test management, mobile, and enterprise testing and multiple other topics. Add this site to your bookmarks to enhance your skills.

DZone

Founded in 1997 by Rick Ross, DZone currently has over 1 million members and a repository of more than 70000 articles. This is one of the biggest communities where anyone can share what they know with millions of other users worldwide. All the articles related to testing are reviewed by their editorial team and published to ensure that only the best content is available to their readers.

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Google’s Testing Blog

This is the official software testing blog of Google where all the updates and latest news in the testing domain is published. A new article is published almost every month which will sharpen your skills as a tester. The articles are archived in a yearly and monthly category.

Software Testing Material

If you want a blog site that is only dedicated to quality assurance and software testing, your search will lead you to this site has more than a million page views monthly. Their software testing blogs cover almost every topic related to the testing domain and the contents are meant for anyone, either a fresher or a professional. It also offers online training covering the latest tools.

Software Testing Tricks

Just like the previous one, the blog posts at this site are dedicated to testing only. The main focus of this site is to share tricks and tips which testers will find helpful in enhancing their knowledge. The posts in this site also cover testing of general appliances like a coffee machine or a microwave oven. If you want to enforce your mind and think in a different dimension while testing an application, the posts in this site will be helpful to you.

Sticky Minds

One of the most popular testing community developed in collaboration with Techwell. They keep their software testing blog section updated with a new post every week which helps both beginners as well as professional testers enhance their skills and learn what is new in the testing domain. They also have a Q & A section where you can get all your queries answered by a forum of fellow and veteran testers.

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Trishkhoo

Apart from its engaging articles, the user-friendly interface of Trishkhoo keeps their readers engaged in the blog posts. The site is maintained by Trish, a blogger who has mastered the art of conveying knowledge in a storytelling manner. The site also offers training as well. If you visit it right now, you will get the chance to attend a 2-day course based on the fundamentals of automation testing.

Adventures in Automation

If you are a manual tester looking to switch in the automation domain, this software testing blog will be perfect for you. Created by TJ Maher, organizer of the Ministry of Testing in Boston, created this blog with the aim of teaching testers the next best thing that is going to overshadow manual testing and ease the efforts of testers. The posts are arranged categorically ranging from Beginner and Appium to Code examples and many other kinds of stuff.

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LambdaTest

While speaking about testing we can never forget our very own blog. Being one of the leading solution providers for cloud-based cross-browser testing, the software testing blog section of LambdaTest is regularly updated with all the latest trends happening in the testing domain, You will find articles related to manual, automation, usability, regression and other testing domains as well.

Abode QA

Their mission is to bring more quality blogs which the readers deserve. You will find a vast repository of software testing blogs and tutorials on manual testing, Selenium, and other automation tools which are free. The writers of the blogs are testing professionals just like you and if you possess the skill and want to share your knowledge, you can become an author in their blog as well.

A comprehensive end to end Testing tutorial that covers what E2E Testing is, its importance, benefits, and how to perform it with real-time examples.

The Test Eye

Experts like Rikard Edgren, Henrik Emilsson share their knowledge via The Test Eye. Their logo resembles the all-seeing Eye of Horus that symbolizes knowledge in Egyptian mythology. They provide knowledge about scripted testing, new testing ideas, and techniques in all the recent project methodologies like DevOps and Agile. The best part of this software testing blog is the recommendation section where the experts will recommend you on machines, skills, and ideas

Software Testing Magazine

This software testing blog is dedicated to book reviews, tools, blog posts and articles related to integration, unit, functional, acceptance and other related fields in the testing domain. You will also find video tutorials as well as updates about Software testing conferences happening around the world in their Conferences section.

E2E Testing tutorial: Complete Guide to End to End Testing With Examples

arnabroychowdhury — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 09:21:27 +0000

E2E Testing also called End to End testing, is a very common testing methodology where the objective is to test how an application works by checking the flow from start to end. Not only the application flow under dev environment is tested, but the tester also has to check how it behaves once integrated with the external interface. Usually, this testing phase is executed after functional testing and system testing is completed. The technical definition of end to end testing is — a type of testing to ensure that behavioural flow of an application works as expected by performing a complete, thorough testing, from the beginning to end of the product-user interaction in order to realize any dependency or flaw in the workflow of the application.

Why End to End Testing is Required?

In the current Agile world, an application is interconnected and integrated with multiple systems that are outside of the application environment. The entire flow of the application thus gets complicated. End to end testing ensures that the application is tested from all layers — front end to backend along with its interfaces and the endpoints. Let’s see why it is needed.

Health of Back-end—End to end testing checks the database as well as backend layer of the application. Since the core functionalities of the application depend on the back end and database layer, testing this layer checks how accurately the application can perform the critical functions.

Errors in Distributed Environment—End to end testing makes it possible to test an application that is based on SOA or cloud environments. Also, in application consisting multiple components that require an all-around check, it helps to pinpoint problems in the core.

App Behavior Validation in Multi-tier System— In applications having a complex architecture or a workflow that is subdivided into multiple tiers, the end to end testing checks the overall functioning as well as functioning in individual layers. It also identifies the behavior of the application in connected systems.

Ensuring Interaction Accuracy— Since front-end testing is also involved, it is ensured that the application behaves accurately a provides a user experience that is consistent across multiple platforms, devices and environments.

Reusability of Test Cases— During different processes of the application’s lifecycle, the end to end testing provides the option to execute test cases that are repeatable. Moreover, it also increases the test coverage and makes the owner confident in the performance of the application.

Now that we have seen why the E2E testing is required, let’s see how it is carried out.

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How End to End Testing is Performed?

Let’s summarize the key activities that are must to include during the end to end testing.

Thoroughly analyze the requirements before starting the testing phase.
Setting up the test environment following all the prerequisites.
Analyze the software and hardware requirements ( both minimum as well as recommended configuration).
Study the main system along with connected subsystems.
List down the responsibilities of all systems involved.
List down the testing methods along with the description of the standards to be followed.
Design the test cases and while doing so also trace the requirement matrix.
Save the output results and input data before testing each system.

Key activities being set, let’s dive in deep.

End to end testing process can be divided into 3 categories.

User Functions

As a part of user functions, the following activities should be performed.

List down the software system’s features and the subsystems that are interconnected.
Keep track of the actions performed for any functionality along with the input data and output results.
Between different functionalities performed from the user’s end find out if there is any relation.
Check whether the user functions are independent or can be reused. In short — find their nature.

Let’s explore a scenario that will help us to understand E2E testing. We’ll consider an online theatre booking service like BookMyShow.

Log into the application
Search for a movie show.
Book your seats.
Check the payment gateway.
Check the message confirmation for the booked tickets.
Logout from the application.

Conditions Depending On User Function

As a part of building conditions, do the following:

For each user function, build a set of conditions.
Conditions should include parameters like timing, data conditions, and sequence.

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Considering our previous example of BookMyShow we can have the following condition check.
In the login page

Check whether error messages are reflected properly in case of incorrect password or username.
Check the same scenario with valid user details and see if login is successful.
Check the strength of a password.
Check email address validation.
Check the error messages if the amount to be transferred is greater than your wallet balance.

Payment page

Invalid pin.
Invalid CVV.
Invalid Debit/Credit credentials.
Validate all mandatory fields are working.

Build the Test Cases

Before building the test cases, consider the following factors.

Write more than one test cases for every scenario and every functionality.
Enlist each condition as separate test cases.

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Parameters Involved During End to End Testing

Let’s move on to the important parameters that are involved during the end to end testing.

Test Case Preparation— An important thing to track is at what is the current state of the test case preparation. The tester can track this in form of a graph. It gives an idea of the progress of test case preparation (current vs planned).
The progress of Weekly Test— This provides a percentage base report of the test completion. Currently executed, not executed and failed test cases are compared weekly with the planned report.
Details of Defect— This report provides a percentage of defects that are closed or opened by the end of a week. Weekly distribution of defects based on priority and criticality is also taken into account.
Availability of Environment— This report provides a comparison of the total time scheduled for testing every day versus the total hours actually spent.

How Is It Different From System Testing?

After discussing all the aspects involved in End to end testing, let us discuss how different it is from system testing.
Before moving on to that, we should know what is system testing. It is basically a kind of black box testing, where the application is tested after integrating it with the external system. The testing is performed from a user’s point of view considering real-world conditions.
But how different it is from End to end testing? Well,

System testing validates only the integrated software system whereas End to end testing checks both the main as well as interconnected systems.
System testing checks features and functionalities of the system while E2E testing checks the complete flow of the system.
Only non-functional and functional testing are considered in system testing, while in E2E testing, backend systems along with all other interfaces are considered.
System testing is executed once Integration testing is completed. End to end testing is carried out immediately after system testing is completed.
Both Automation, as well as manual procedures, can be used for System testing. However, for an end to end testing, the process gets much complex since it is hard to automate testing of external interfaces. Hence, manual testing is preferred.

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Automation and E2E Testing

No matter how much advantageous, automation has a very little scope at the end to end testing. This is because of the following:

The architecture of complex applications and more interconnected systems makes it difficult to write test cases.
When database testing is involved, that requires constant updating and deleting table or data, it is impossible to write an automated script that can do the job.

However partial automation testing is possible. Especially with the UI layer of the application or testing the functionality, selenium web driver or related tools can be used to write automated scripts for partial testing.

Challenges Faced During E2E Testing

Although detecting bugs in a complex workflow is considered to be the biggest challenge in the end to end testing, apart from that there are other complications as well. Let’s take a look.

Building a Workflow— The test cases in E2E testing must be executed sequentially. In a distributed workflow, it is difficult to manage a workflow where a thousand cases can be run in a sequential order.
Access Issue— Custom applications can be tested easily in a virtual dev environment. The real challenge arrives when you have to test an offline application in client or production environment. There is limited availability of test environments and you have to install local agents and log in to virtual machines. After all of these, you will need to figure out a way to keep the machine on during the time of the test and prevent unforeseen situations like system updates from interrupting the execution of test cases.

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Best Practices for E2E Testing

A typical end to end testing can be a lot of time-consuming when performed manually and a lot complex as well. However, following certain best practices will ensure a smooth completion of testing and efficient cost management. Let’s take a look at them.

Test from the Perspective of an End User— Think like a user, focus more on features rather than how the functionalities are implemented. Use documents related to acceptance testing, user stories that will help you to capture the user’s point of view and design test cases accordingly.
Limit Scenarios Involving Exception Testing— Use end to end testing only to capture typical user scenarios. For exception scenarios, use integration testing and low-level unit testing.
Risk Analysis— This is an important thing to consider. Concentrate on the features of your application whose failure will cause high risk. A risk assessment matrix will become quite a useful tool for this purpose.
Maintain an Order— With complexity in test cases and increasing components, points of failure also increases and it becomes difficult to debug them. How to avoid it? Execute unit testing and integration testing beforehand and resolve errors that are easier to detect. Once E2E testing starts, run smoke tests, sanity tests along with other high-risk test scenarios.
Manage the Environment— Make sure the system set up for running the test cases are proficient enough. Document the requirements and make sure they are fulfilled by your system administrator before the testing starts. An easier solution is to follow the system requirement of the production environment. Also, to keep your staging environment as close to production as possible.
Setup and Teardown Optimization— Make sure that your environment is ready to start the job at a moment’s notice. Once testing is done, clear the test data so that the environment is restored to the state it was originally and can be used anytime for another round of testing.

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What The Future Has in Store?

With the advancement of IoT and the introduction of modern applications, we are seeing more and more interconnected applications with every device in our surrounding environment. Their workflow is a bit complicated but can be a lot beneficial.

Scenarios have often arisen when an organizational application is deployed at a place outside the organization and it failed, affecting business processes. Such situations can be avoided if an end to end testing is carried out effectively. It ensures that the application performs properly at all layers, especially when it is integrated with external systems.

With information technology growing more, the testing industry has already become a mandatory part of any software development methodology. If the correct solution and best practices are added, effort spends on end to end testing can be a lot beneficial. Also, with software systems getting more complicated day by day and as said before, IoT becoming the next top trend in the software industry, the future holds a lot in store for testing professionals specializing in End to end testing.

Top 13 Skills of A Good QA Manager in 2021

arnabroychowdhury — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 08:30:22 +0000

I believe that to work as a QA Manager is often considered underrated in terms of work pressure. To utilize numerous employees who have varied expertise from one subject to another, in an optimal way. It becomes a challenge to bring them all up to the pace with the Agile development model, along with a healthy, competitive environment, without affecting the project deadlines. Skills for QA manager is one umbrella which should have a mix of technical & non-technical traits. Finding a combination of both is difficult for organizations to find in one individual, and as an individual to accumulate the combination of both, technical + non-technical traits are a challenge in itself.

Here, I will be talking about the top 13 skills for QA manager which will help you be the leader of an organization’s “dream team”.

Having An Effective Communication Skill

Excellent written as well as verbal communication is the most pivotal skills for QA managers. As a QA manager, you need to:

Effectively report the overall status of his team to higher management.
Ability to communicate properly with non-technical as well as technical people, especially explaining the technical challenges to the management team.
Should be able to diplomatically deny any request from higher management or the development team when the overall product quality is not perfect for release.

Conducting regular meetings also falls among the duties of a manager.

If the team is large, formal meetings should be conducted regularly where the agenda should be discussed prior to the meeting and a MOM should be sent to the team members after the meeting.
If the team is small, pre and post-meeting MOM is not necessary, a basic stand up meeting will be perfect.

Problem Solving

Once I worked on a project where the testing team faced a fast transition from manual to automation. Initially, when the team worked on manual testing, the test cases were not that much detailed since testers understood what they needed to do in each test cases. But when automation testing with Selenium came into play, multiple problems surfaced. Automation testers who were hired did not understand the test cases as they were not detailed enough. Here are 17 lessons for writing effective test cases. The tool they used could not support the bulk export of test cases and finally, the team had to answer to the management regarding where their work was blocked.

Problem-solving ability is a crucial skill for QA managers to deal with such unprecedented scenarios effectively.

If your project is developing a web application, the most common issue often faced is cross browser compatibility testing. If your project is in Agile, cross browser compatibility may not be specified in the requirement but may come as an enhancement request later on, once a demo is scheduled and the stakeholder finds out that the application is failing to render on the certain browser running on specific devices.

You can deal with such situations with such unprecedented scenarios by:

Training the testers from the beginning to follow standard procedures to avoid less detailed and bulky test cases.
Use mind maps and checklists which can replace the test cases.
Sort the problem according to complexity, start by solving the problem with minimum risk and complexity and move up higher.

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Hawk-Eyed Gaze Over Analytics

Be Adaptable + Influential

Conduct an audit to find out if anything is wrong in the existing process, for example — the team may be facing a problem to maintain test scripts which are quite similar.
Discuss with the team and find out their opinion regarding what needs to change, for example setting up data-driven tests.
The final step is to implement the change and convincing the higher management why this change is required.

Visualization & Prioritization Of Business Scenarios

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Time Management — Crucial in the Agile World

My suggestion to you would be to go for a good project management tools such as Jira, Asana which would offer a dashboard to help everyone understand what every member of the team is doing and when? Using a custom IM(Instant Messaging) web app such as Skype, Slack etc. would also help in collaborating better to pace up the project delivery. Here are top 19 collaboration tools for your software testing team.

Have a Strong Base in Programming

Programming languages are a must-have skill for QA managers. With the growing usage of automation tools, QA managers must also have a strong programming base to keep up with their team as well as understanding what the client needs. What programming language you should learn depends on the automation script used by your organization. For example, if your team works with Selenium WebDriver, you should have knowledge in JavaScript. On the other hand knowledge of Java or web services is needed if your project is using UFT. Apart from that, knowledge of SQL is something that every manager should possess no matter what automation tool your company is using. Apart from that, you should know the core fundamentals of BDD and object-oriented programming. This includes practical knowledge of Python, Ruby, and Perl as well. Here are top programming languages helpful for testers.

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Strong Negotiation Skills

The situation may often arise when you need to convince the stakeholders or higher management that their expectation from your team is not possible in real time. Let me explain by giving an example.

Often the same thing happened when stakeholders used to pick a “defect” even when everything was working fine as per requirement.

Be A Team Player

Organize budget-friendly events that involve team building activities and games.
During the lunch hours, take out your team together for lunch and have discussions on non-technical topics so that the team members become friendlier with you as well as among themselves.
Encourage your QA team to help and cooperate, other teams, especially the development team.
The most organization allows a quarterly or half-yearly budget to the project that is to be spent on events or parties. Even if your company does not have that, encourage your team to organize parties or outings where they can have a good time together not as colleagues, but as friends.

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Willingness To Help Your Team Members Grow As An Individual

Start by spreading the best practices which you learned in your overall career as a quality analyst or a QA manager.
Organize internal as well as external training. Motivate your team members to attend those training by explaining how it will help in their career.
Work in a group to share the competencies among the entire team.
Also, don’t keep your team members too busy. Allow them some time and let them learn a few things by themselves. Especially if one of your team members is a fresher, start by keeping his workload light with no hurry or deadline so that he can learn to complete the work by himself without taking any help from the seniors.

Be Bold and Confident

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Be Skeptical For Traditional Prejudices

Read The Situation — Know When to Step in or Step Aside

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So, What Makes A Good QA Manager?

Is it is technical skills, the certifications, years of experience in software testing or keeping up with the current testing trends such as Shift-left testing, IoT, Automation testing and more! Well, you need all of that, but most importantly you need an ability to create and work with a creative team where each and every member are equally valuable and irreplaceable for the organization. You need to understand your role as a manager as well as how to effectively use your leadership skills which will not only make our team stand out, but also make you inspiration in the eyes of your team members. All the best!

What Is Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery(CI/CD)?

arnabroychowdhury — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 08:16:30 +0000

Continuous integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD) are the processes, where your development team involves frequent code changes that are pushed in the main branch while ensuring that it does not impact any changes made by developers working parallelly. The aim of it is to reduce the chance of defects and conflicts during the integration of the complete project. Let’s take a deep dive and learn more about the fundamentals of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD).

What Is Continuous Integration?

Continuous Integration is a development methodology that involves frequent integration of code into a shared repository. The integration may occur several times a day, verified by automated test cases and a build sequence. It should be kept in mind that automated testing is not mandatory for CI. It is only practiced typically for ensuring a bug-free code.

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Benefits of Continuous Integration(CI)

Here are few benefits that have made CI(continuous integration) essential to any application development lifecycle.

Early Bug Detection: If there is an error in the local version of the code that has not been checked previously, a build failure occurs at an early stage. Before proceeding further, the developer will be required to fix the error. This also benefits the QA team since they will mostly work on builds that are stable and error-free.
Reduces Bug Count: In any application development lifecycle, bugs are likely to occur. However, with CI/CD being used, the number of bugs is reduced a lot. Although it depends on the effectiveness of the automated testing scripts. Overall, the risk is reduced a lot since bugs are now easier to detect and fix early.
Automating the Process: The Manual effort is reduced a lot since CI automates build, sanity and a few other tests. This makes sure that the path is clear for a successful continuous delivery process.
The process becomes Transparent: A great level of transparency is brought in the overall quality analysis and development process. The team gets a clear idea when a test fails, what is causing the failure and whether there is any significant defect. This enables the team to make a real-time decision on where and how the efficiency can be improved.
Cost-effective Process: Since bug count is low, manual testing time is greatly reduced and the clarity increases on the overall system, it optimizes the budget of the project.

What is Continuous Delivery(CD)?

Continuous delivery is the process of getting all kinds of changes to production. Changes may include configuration changes, new features, error fixes etc. They are delivered to the user in a safe, quick and sustainable manner.

The goal of Continuous Delivery is to make deployment predictable and scheduled in a routine manger. It is achieved by ensuring that the code always remains in a state where it can be deployed whenever demanded, even when an entire team of developers is constantly making changes to it. Unlike continuous integration, testing and integrating phases are eliminated and the traditional process of code freeze is followed.

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Benefits of Continuous Delivery

If the best practices are followed, continuous delivery can help your application development in quite a few ways.

Reducing the Risk: The main goal of Continuous Delivery is to make deployment easier and faster. Patterns like blue-green deployment make it possible to deploy the code at very low risk and almost no downtime, making deployment totally undetectable to the users.
High-Quality Application: Most of the process is automated, testers now have a lot of time to focus on important testing phases like exploratory, usability, security and performance testing. These activities can now be continuously performed during the delivery process, ensuring a higher quality application.
Reduced Cost: When an investment is made on testing, build and deployment, the product evolves quite a lot throughout its lifetime. The cost of frequent bug fixes and enhancements are reduced since certain fixed costs that are associated with the release is eliminated because of continuous delivery.
Happier Team and Better Product: Since the aim of Continuous Delivery is to make a product release painless, the team can work in a relaxing manner. Because of frequent release, the team works closely with users and learn what ideas work and what new can be implemented to delight the users. Continuous user feedback and new testing methodologies also increase the product’s quality.

Not only that, with the development and testing team working together in automating the deployment and build, developers can incorporate regression testing and integration in their daily tasks and reduce the amount of rework required in the traditional application development lifecycle.

This Playwright tutorial will guide you through the setup of the Playwright framework, which will enable you to write end-to-end tests for your future projects.

How Is Continuous Delivery Different From Continuous Deployment?

Continuous integration is usually the process when code changes made by different developers are integrated into the main code branch as soon as possible. It is usually done several times a day. The process ensures that code changes committed by individual developers do not divert or impact the main code branch. When combined with automated testing, it ensures that your code is dependable and can be moved into the next phase, i.e. testing or production.
Continuous deployment is somewhat similar to continuous integration. It is the process where your application can be deployed at any time to production or test environment if the current version passes all the automated unit test cases.
Continuous delivery is the methodology where your codebase can be deployed at any time. Apart from ensuring that your application has successfully passed all automated test cases, it also saved the configuration required to deploy the code in production, resulting in a faster application development lifecycle.

A comprehensive end to end Testing tutorial that covers what E2E Testing is, its importance, benefits, and how to perform it with real-time examples.

How To Perform Continuous Delivery?

Let’s discuss the process flow

Developer builds their code on the local system that has all the new changes or new requirements.
Once coding is completed, the developer needs to write automated unit testing scripts that will test the code. This process is optional, however, and can be done by the testing team as well.
A local build is executed which ensures that no breakage is occurring in the application because of the code.
After a successful build, the developer checks if any of his team members or peers have checked-in anything new.
If there are any incoming changes, they should be accepted by the developer to make sure that the copy he is uploading is the most recent one.
Because of the newly merged copies, syncing the code with the main branch may cause certain conflicts.
In case there is any conflict, they should be fixed to make sure the changes made are in sync with the main branch.
The changes are now ready to be checked in. This process is known as “code commit”.
After the code is committed, another build of the source code is run on the integration system.
The new and updated code is finally ready for the next stage, i.e. testing or deployment.
In the next section, we shall discuss some basic checklist for continuous delivery.

Continuous Delivery Checklist

The following checklist should be followed before you submit your code in order to create a smooth delivery process.

Before any changes are submitted, ensure that the current build is successful. If there are some issues, fix the build before any new code is submitted.
If the build is in the successful state, rebase your workspace to the configuration in which the build was successful.
In your local system, build and test the code to check if any functionality is impacted because of the changes you made.
If everything goes well, check in the code.
Allow competition of continuous integration with the new code changes.
If somehow the build fails, stop and go back to the 3rd step in the checklist.
If the build is successful, work on your next code.

In this Appium tutorial, learn about Appium and its benefits for mobile automation testing. Take a look at how Appium works and see how to perform Appium testing of your mobile applications.

Tools Of Trade For Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery(CI/CD)

Although there are many tools used for continuous integration, we shall discuss a few top-rated tools that are used by well-known organizations and software professionals worldwide.

**Jenkins** An open source Java-based CI tool that is platform independent. The best part is, it can be configured both using a console or a graphical user interface.
Team City: This is a cloud-based CI server, developed by JetBrains. Although the enterprise edition is paid, there is a free version as well that allowed 3 build agents and a maximum of 100 builds.
Travis CI: One of the oldest Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD) solution, the tool is free for all projects that are open source. It is hosted on GitHub and based on your usage, you can choose the appropriate package from several options.
Gitlab: The CI developed by GitLab is cloud-based, hosted on their official website. It is supported on multiple platforms and has both free and paid versions.
Circle CI: A cloud-based CI tool, it supports GitHub and languages like Node.js, Java, Ruby, Python, Scala, Haskell, and PHP. It allows the parallel building of your code.
Codeship: This is also another hosted tool that comes with basic as well as enterprise editions. The basic version comes with several packages and with expensive enterprise edition, it brings you more option to run parallel builds.

Black Box testing? Don’t worry; we will be covering what is Black box testing, merits, demerits, types & techniques.

Best Practices of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD)

Let’s discuss some best practices for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD) that should be followed by all software professionals as well as organizations.

Keep a Central Repository: A large project involves multiple developers constantly pulling and pushing codes that are organized together to build the application. A revision control system should be kept that will help the team to get the latest clean code from the repository at any point of time during the development cycle.
Automated Deployment and Build: Automated build ensures that the team only gets the latest source code available in the repository and it is compiled every time before the final product is built. Automated Build cycle also allows the developers to push the code into different environments quickly, saving a lot of time.
Include Automated Unit Testing: This will help the team to detect bugs before the code is pushed in the repository. Unit testing, as well as interface testing, have greater clarity on the product’s state before it is released. Testing phase becomes easier and issues can be fixed rapidly.
Test in the Production’s Clone: Often an application that has passed all testing scenarios fails when it is deployed in production because of the environment is different. To prevent this, testing should be executed in an environment that is exactly the same as the production environment. This will allow testers and developers to understand how the application behaves before it is deployed into production.
Commit the Code Everyday: To prevent any conflicts, developers should make it a mandatory practice to commit the code every day in the repository. It provides very little scope to look for errors occurring due to conflicts. It also improves the communication between the team members and allows developers to divide their work into small sections and track the progress of their code.
Build Faster: Continuous integration fundamental purpose is to get feedback instantly after a build. A quick and perfect build keeps the development team ahead and prevents any bottleneck that may occur during unit testing.
Everyone Can See What Others are Doing: Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD) essential goal is to make the communication between team members smooth and effective. Everyone should have a clear idea regarding the state of the application and the latest changes that are made on it. Builds that have failed should be reported immediately to the stakeholders who can then make the relevant changes. IMs, Emails and other monitoring tools are used by various organizations to monitor the state of the builds.

Although the continuous integration and continuous delivery(CI/CD) fundamentals discussed above may look simple, they are a bit complicated to implement. You will need to start a bit slower and buy-in some extra time from the stakeholders to ensure that the team gets sufficient time to complete all the required procedures and deploy a quality product that has passed all the required test cases.

Advanced Guide On How To Write A Bug Report

arnabroychowdhury — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 10:01:54 +0000

A bug that is well described has the capability to reduce the time taken to replicate the defect and resolve it. However, the perfect bug description is a skill overlooked by many organizations.

Bugs can cause delays in the release of an application, and during the testing lifecycle or when the app is in production, developers tend to overlook bugs that are not properly described. This can spoil business relationships between an organization and its clients and may also lead to a company’s loss of reputation in the industry.

In this article on how to write a bug report, we will learn some of the tips and tricks to write a good bug report.

Let’s get started!

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What is a bug report in software testing?

A bug report is a detailed document containing stack traces, device logs, expected and actual outcomes, and other necessary information on the specific bug and error. The main objective of a bug report is to ensure that the bug is discovered in time and sorted out before customers or users get affected by it. A bug report can range anywhere from 2 pages to 20 pages and more. Using the right bug tracking tool can help you deliver the best bug reports on time when you explore how to write a bug report.

In this article, we will discuss how to write a bug report effectively, which can help developers to replicate and resolve the issue.

Let’s get a gist of how to write a good bug report. Our tips and tricks on writing effective bug reports can set your developers to take ROI-induced actions on your product.

Let’s explore the stages of a bug report before we get into how to write a bug report:

Stage 1: You have discovered the bug.

Stage 2: You send a mail to your developer and receive the reply, “Could you please explain further?”

Stage 3: You send a detailed report on what the bug is all about.

Stage 4: The developer takes the necessary action, and tada! The bug is gone forever!

In the above stages, stage 3 is quite important. When the developer asks about the bug, if you send messages like “The website doesn’t load” or “The left button in the side panel of the homepage doesn’t work”, your developer would get muddled. Little information is equal to no information in bug fixing.

Watch this video to know more about test result analysis and reporting in Selenium 4. Also, learn about different selenium reporting tools based on ease of setup, pricing, supported report formats, and more.

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Checklist on how to write a good bug report

Let’s explore the nuances of that most divine bug report developers love to worship. These hacks can save your day and let you share the most needed feedback. You can use some of the most popular bug tracking tools like Jira, Asana, Trello, etc. to make bug tracking much easier and effortless.

Most of such bug tracking tools can easily be integrated with popular cloud-based testing platforms like LambdaTest. **Cross browser testing** tools like LambdaTest supports integrations with the top project management tool, thus enabling you to create issues directly from the LambdaTest platform itself.

LambdaTest allows you to perform cross browser testing of your websites and web apps over an **online browser farm** of over 3000 browsers and operating systems. You can learn more about the integrations from the LambdaTest Integrations page.

Here is a checklist for you to act a tad smart when you are learning how to write a bug report:

Issue ID
Heading
Summary
Screenshots/ Images/ Video recordings
Expected results vs. actual results
Step-by-step procedure to find the bug
Environment
Console logs
URL of the Source
Priority and severity
Additional info

Issue ID: Maintain a clear issue ID. You can auto-generate issue IDs with a bug tracking tool. This will also help you avoid duplication.

Heading: Your heading catches the attention of your developer first. Make it short, clear, and crisp with the needed info on category, pages, or location. Take a look at this section on how to write a good bug report example:

Example: “Homepage: The new blog link doesn’t work”

Summary: Elaborate on your bug report heading with the necessary points on how and when the bug has been found. A good report summary can come in handy when your developer wants to locate the bug in the bug inventory in the future.

Example: “We have published the social media posts at 10.15 AM on our recent blog titled “Food for life”. But when I clicked on the blog link, nothing happened. I tried to visit the page manually, but it shows ‘The site can’t be reached”

Screenshots/Images/Video recordings: It’s always better to go visual since visualization can yield better results. Yes, visual testing is of great importance. A video recording, image, or screenshot can soon help your developer locate the bug. They would surely be able to know how exactly the bug has impacted and what they need to do next.

Expected results vs Actual results: Now, convey what you expected would appear on the screen and what appeared to your developer. This will help any developer to get a clear picture of what’s expected and what’s not. This is where a test case comes into play. The actual difference between a test case and a bug report is that the test case differentiates between the expected result and the actual result. On the other hand, a bug report speaks about the number of errors and how to fix them.

Example:

Expected result: The blog link would take the user to the webpage.

Actual result: The blog link doesn’t take the user to the webpage.

Step-by-step procedure to find the bug: Assume that your developer is a noob who doesn’t know how and when you found the bug. How would you explain it to them? First, illustrate it in the report.
Example:

Go to the homepage.
Click on the resources page.
Click on the blog.
Click on this blog link: https://www.elanthevoila.com/blog/food-for-life/

Environment: Include the vital info such as browser, OS version, size of the screen, pixel ratio, and level of zooming in the test environment. This will allow the developer to get an idea on which platform or gadget the error appears to be zoomed.

Example:

Browser: Firefox 100
Screen size: 1920×1080
OS: Windows Server 2022
Viewport Size: 360 x 800
Zoom level: 100%
Pixel ratio: @3x

Console logs: Console logs are the area where a developer can witness what errors have been identified on the webpage from a technical point of view. This is the best choice to identify where it all went wrong after you get an idea on how to write a bug report.

URL of the Source: Your developer needs to know the exact location of where the bug was found. This will help them take action within minutes.

Example: “https://www.elanthevoila.com/blog/food-for-life/”

Priority and severity: Give a clear picture of how severe the bug is. Prioritize it accordingly. The bug severity can range anywhere between

Major
Critical
Trivial
Enhancement
Minor

The severity can range anywhere between high, medium, or low.

Additional info: It’s always good to align the document professionally. Ensure that you provide a few extra pieces of info too. For example, give information on your name, due date, assigned developer, and conversation with the user or customer needed to fast-track the debugging process.

Example:

Name: Amrita Angappa
Due date: 22/05/2022
Assigned developer: Brandon Stark

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Tips and Tricks to remember

Be it writing a bug report after **online browser testing** or **Selenium testing**, these tips and tricks can be of utmost help to anyone who is learning how to write a bug report:

Check if it is really a bug

Often, testers fail to test a critical functionality because of environmental issues or user errors and log it as a bug. This leads to a waste of time for both the developer and the tester. Before they learn how to write a bug report, the tester should:

Reproduce the issue again in different environments.
Make sure there is no environmental issue.
Check with the requirement specifications and make sure whether the functionality is failing or is it supposed to behave the way it is currently doing.

Once you have made sure that all these criteria have been fulfilled, you can go ahead to file a bug report. This is an important step when you want to learn how to write a bug report.

Be specific in the overview

When you ask the question, “How to write a good bug report?” The first answer would be to contain

A precise summary section to make the bug report unique and easily identifiable.
A brief overview that gives a developer a clear understanding of the issue.

Often, the summary itself gives the developer an idea of what the bug is. For example, “Button is not working in iPhone X”. By looking at the summary, the developer understands that the issue is with a certain button on iPhone X.

A summary is also important to determine the lifecycle of a bug. A properly explained overview will give the developer an idea of the scenario where the error can be reproduced. While describing the overview after learning how to write a bug report, the tester must make sure to

Provide relevant information on why the issue is a bug.
Provide detailed information on how to reproduce it.
Provide information on the business requirement.

The uniqueness of the bug

Testers often make the mistake of reporting the same bug multiple times. An enterprise-grade bug reporting tool should have indexing and a proper directory to find out bugs that have been reported. So, the next time a bug is easily detected, instead of reporting it, you must

Go through the defect logs and find out if the same bug or a bug similar to it already has not been reported.
Before reporting the bug, give it a unique bug id and make the title such that it can be found easily in the index.
In bug reporting tools, there are criteria where the severity of the bug can be mentioned. The bug may be minor, major, critical, or in the worst case, a blocker. How soon the bug needs to be fixed depends on its category.

Steps to reproduce the bug

This is the most important part of “How to write a bug report?”. It helps the developer to replicate the issue in the development or production environment. This is the phase where the tester teaches the developer how to recreate the bug in their environment. While writing this section, instead of a brief summary, focus on:

Step by step guide to observing the impacted functionality.
Mention the environment and platform details and also the user type, whether the issue is happening for a specific user or all users.
Don’t forget to attach screenshots. These act as solid evidence for your report and also helps the developer to compare the report with the scenario recreated on their system.

Learn how to mark bugs using real-time testing:

Behavioral report

Before reporting a bug, the tester should describe how a functionality or part of an application is expected to behave. Sections from the requirement specification consisting of the business requirements can also be attached here so that the developer can understand how the application should work. This is known as expected behavior. For example, “On clicking the ‘Logout’ button, the user should log out from the application”.

The second section of the behavioral report contains the subject matter of the bug. This consists of how the functionality behaves and how much different it is from the expected behavior. While writing this section, terms like “not working”, and “defect” should be avoided. As you understand how to write a bug report, you should remember that a developer never likes someone else to tell them that their code is wrong.

Give specific details on how the functionality is not working as expected. This step is a must for any learner who is into understanding how to write a bug report. For example, “On clicking the ‘Logout’ button, the application closes, and an error report is displayed showing ‘session terminated”. For functionality testing, depending on an automation testing tool can help very well.

Follow up on the reports

A job of a successful manual or an automation tester is not only to report bugs but also to make sure that the bug has been fixed. After the report has been submitted, follow up with the developer and share that you are willing to help. Sharing a word of encouragement while following up on the report is a nice thing to do. A developer who feels encouraged about his work is more likely to fix a defect than a developer who gets annoyed by reading a poorly written bug report.

After focusing on the above-mentioned points, you will soon be able to write a high-quality bug report, be it for manual testing or automation testing. The bug reports should be focused on since they are an important mode of communication between a developer, a tester, and the management.

Furthermore, a great bug report that leads to the quick fixing of the defect will not only increase the quality assurance of the product but will also ensure that you have a good working relationship with the developers.

Bonus Tips and Tricks

These added tips and tricks can serve you well when you want to identify the pattern in how to write a bug report.

Report as soon as you locate the bug

When you find a bug as you test; you needn’t wait to write a complete bug report later. This will ensure that your bug report is on par with the industry standards. However, you might miss out on crucial aspects when you plan to write your bug later. Nowadays, automation testing can help you speed up the bug reporting process. This is crucial for anyone who wants to know how to write a good bug report.

Reproduce the bugs at least thrice before you report

Giving wrong information can test the patience of the calmest developers out there. Take due diligence to check thrice before you hit the send button on the bug report. Even if it’s not reproducible, make an effort to record the timing of the bug. This will add value to being cautious in the future. This is vital to know even before you figure out how to write a bug report.

Read the report carefully before sending

As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. Check for any grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, or unclear sentences before you send the report to avoid any sort of embarrassment. It’s important that you learn how to write a good bug report with top-class proofreading skills.

Avoid foul language

Yes, a bug was found. But that doesn’t give anyone the liberty to attack the developer personally. Avoid personal criticism and remain professional. This is the must-follow rule for anyone learning “How to write a bug report”.

Conclusion

Your bug report should be a high-quality document, easy to read through, clear & concise, and shouldn’t raise any additional open questions for anyone reading through them. A good bug report will always make you feel confident once submitted to the developers and will also create a good relationship with the entire development team ✨

Which steps do you go through while filling out bug reports? Did we cover every point on how to write a bug report? Please share them in the comments for everyone to learn and take inspiration. Happy Testing 😉

There is no doubt that your bug report should be a high-quality document. Therefore, prioritize quality when you research how to write a bug report.

Focus on writing good bug reports and spend some time on this task because this is the main communication point between the tester, developer, and the manager. Managers should create awareness in their team on how to write a bug report, which is any tester’s primary responsibility.

Your effort towards writing a good Bug report will not only save the resources of the company but also create a good relationship between you and the developers.

For better productivity and to reduce the turnaround time between you and the developer, learn how to write a good bug report.