Wednesday 19 January 2011

UI Tests Automation for Silverlight

I'm currently working on a UI test automation task for Silverlight interface. There are not many tools available for that so we decided to evaluate the most popular one i.e. Telerik's WebUI Test Studio. I chose Developer Edition as it easily integrates with Visual Studio. For testers, managers etc there is also a standalone version available.

After a few days of playing with it I can already say it's quite powerful. Once you get familiar with it and learn a few tricks you can easily develop complex UI tests that would save your team a lot of time. Below is a short summary of its pros & cons:

Pros:
  • Supports Silverlight testing

  • Intuitive test recorder

  • For basic tests no coding required (also including logic: if/else, loops)

  • Integrated data access (spreadsheets, csv, database, ...) for data driven tests

  • Multiple video tutorials available

  • Full integration with Telerik's RAD controls

  • Strong community

  • Fast support

Cons:
  • Documentation doesn't cover the entire functionality

  • More complex tests require more coding than recording

  • Support for Silverlight available but yet limited (some additional coding required e.g. when veryfing the content of a ComboBox)

  • Dev & QA Editions differ slightly in available functionality (although I'm not sure that's really a con)

All in all, I would recommend it. I don't think there is really an alternative on the market. Is there?

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