Automated Web Testing Best Practices

When recording automation, it's important to stay laser focused on your main objective - creating a sustainable test that can be executed consistently for regression testing. By staying in this mind set and taking time to think through each test case and how to best tackle it - you will have created tests that will thoroughly test your application build after build.

A common pitfall new testers fall into is creating automation that is action oriented without setting appropriate 'verification' and 'wait' steps. 'Verification' and 'wait ' steps allow you to ensure elements exist prior to performing click actions and to verify your actions trigger the appropriate response from your application. They are also used to handle the timing issues that can be caused in many AJAX and Silverlight applications.

Take a look at a video demonstration I created that will walk you through this common pitfall and show you the power of adding in Verification and Wait steps to your test: