May 23, 2007

Introducing ActionThis



Here's why I've been so quiet of late - work has been pretty absorbing. I'm part of the team working on an amazing new Web2.0-ey project called ActionThis.

This is an application focussed on project execution and recovery - it's presenting exciting new Testing challenges partly because it represents a paradigm shift in it's approach - and partly because its the first truly agile software project I've been involved with.

At Intergen we've now entered into a partnership arrangement with CompuWare. I'm using their TestPartner and QADirector in the day to day work on Action This. I expect to be presenting a Twilight session shortly on this once we hit our Beta Release. I expect this to take the form of a Case study about the ActionThis QA process, automated testing and AJAX apps.

It's an awesome thing to be a part of, and I can't wait to tell you more (when I'm allowed to), but you can sign up for more news as it happens at >> www.actionthis.com

February 2, 2007

5 Things

I got tagged by Gabe in the 5 things blog meme.

I normally wouldn't do this kind of thing, but anyway, here goes:

1. Tip-Top Pineapple Crush Icecream gives me hives. The world is now a safer place now they've stopped making it.

2. I was in Rarotonga during Hurricane Sally (1 Jan 1987). The eye of the storm went over the top of us at halfway through. Apparantly this is relatively rare, but it gave us a chance to secure the section of roof which had lifted off. I was shit-scared.

3. When I first came to Wellington I stayed in a flat full of Anarchists. Lots of mohawks, dogs and a dessicated pizza hanging from the living room ceiling. One thing that still makes me retch to this day was the fridge that the dog food was kept in. I'd guess it hadn't been cleaned in 5 years and their power was disconnected regularly. That relationship didn't last. Absolutely. Disgusting.

4. After graduation, I got a job at Victoria University which involved (amongst other things) running and maintaining a Particle Accelerator for the Nuclear Physics Group.

5. On my OE I spent months in Scotland without work. I could only afford to eat bread, jam and porridge, no heating and no fun. ( Actually looking back on it now it seems like a bizarre cultural immersion programme.)

I agree with Mr Peters - Everyone has already done this, so I won't spread the madness.

January 19, 2007

Watin / WatiNFixture - New Versions

WatiN 0.9.5 was relased 1/1/'07 with
WatiNFixture 0.2 following soon after at:

I've now got a fairly good handle on a WatiN test pattern that works for me - basically a modified form of a pattern blogged by Richard Griffin. He's the guy that spooled up the WatiN Recorder tool to generate WatiN script from a browser session..

My favourite new feature in WatiN 0.9.5 is the ability to filter out a collection of elements - this is particularly useful in repeater sections where an item of interest may be buried in a list with little to distinguish it from other items. I had previously been doing this by reg-ex matching within the HTML body and trying to strip out the relevant button ids etc.

Much, much cleaner.