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Selenium Conf 2016 – Takeaways

QA Team
June 28, 2016 |

The Selenium conference, SeConf India 2016 is a volunteer-run, non-profit event presented by members of the Selenium Community. The goal of the conference is to bring together Selenium developers & enthusiasts from around the world to share ideas, socialize, and work together on enhancing the present and future success of projects.

The conference held in Bangalore, India started off with two-day presentations by Selenium and automation testing experts and practitioners from around the world which includes general session keynotes and parallel tracks on 26th & 27th June 2016. We had a great opportunity to meet, network and learn from Selenium experts.

Session Highlights – Day 1

Keynote – Selenium:State of the Union by Simon Stewart

Simon Stewart, the creator of WebDriver, core Selenium 2 developer presented the upcoming versions of Selenium.

Selenium 3 BETA:

Simon explained about the features included in Selenium 3 BETA version wherein the WebDriver concepts remains the same and the Selenium Core will be emulated with the Test Runner. He also made us repeat, “Selenium Core is No More”.

Selenium 4:

Selenium 4 would be the W3C version of WebDriver.

Practical Tips & Tricks for Selenium by Dave Haeffner

Dave gave the demonstration of power of selenium with various types of testing like Headless Browser testing,  A/B testing, Visual testing etc.

Reliable and Trustworthy Automated GUI Tests by Julian Harty

Julian explained the importance of Automated GUI Tests.

The topics covered:

  • How automated GUI tests work?
  • Deciding where the tests need to be flexible and when do we want them to fail?
  • When should a test be automated?
  • What are the tools for testing UI in a Web application? 

Automated Analytics Testing with Open Source Tools by Marcus Merrell

Marcus explained about the importance of Web Analytics and how analytics works, how to involve the QA team early, and how to integrate analytics testing into the normal QA process, using Selenium and other open source tools.

It is All About Prioritization, At The End Of The Day by Rajini Padmanaban

Rajini stressed the principle of “First things First”. The process that needs to be carried out is to evaluate a group of items and ranking them in order of Importance and Urgency , wherein , Importance denotes Impact and Urgency denotes Time.

Statistical Element Locator by Oren Rubin 

Oren explained about the biggest challenges that Test Automation developers face – finding the same element with high fidelity while the Application Under Test keeps changing dynamically. 

Automating the Responsive Web Design Testing by Pranathi Birudugadda 

The topics covered:

  • What is Responsive Web Design?
  • How to test multiple devices/platforms?
  • What are the Challenges faced while testing Responsive Web Design?
  • How can Galen Framework be used for testing Responsive Web Design?

Can We Have It All!(Selenium for web, mobile and everything what a product needs) by Pooja Shah

Pooja gave a demonstration on building a scalable test framework and also it’s evolution to solve most of our daily challenges using Release Status Analyser, a one-click solution based on jenkins/xfpanel.

The final session was on “Q&A with the Selenium Committee” .

Day 1 ended with “Thaalavattam Project- A music jam with 100 instruments”

Session Highlights – Day 2

Keynote – Checking as a service by Bret Pettichord

Bret suggested a re-frame in how we understand the business value of automated testing. One shift is to see automation as “checking” rather than “testing”. Another is the shift from software delivery to service delivery, including fully embracing DevOps. The resulting approach could be called Checking as a Service or CheckOps, and forces us to rethink traditional automation priorities.

What does the money want? #SeConf16 pic.twitter.com/VgJJK78V28

The trouble with page objects – You always knew were wrong but couldn’t explain why by Antony Marcano

Outline of the session:

  • History of page  objects
  • What is SOLID and why does it matter?
  • Common ways that PageObjects violate SOLID principles.
  • Refactoring Page Objects towards SOLID principles. 

From pyramid to hourglass-New approach and best practices for digital apps testing  by Roy Nuriel

Learnings from the session:

  • Test automation pyramid
  • Digital test automation hourglass
  • How to achieve continuous quality
  • Hourglass – Why they are needed? 

One page to test them all! by Priti Biyani

This session was purely based on how to use a single framework to test a particular application developed on all platforms.

Web Push Notification Automation Mystery Solved! by Ankita Gupta and Jatin Makhija

Outline of the demo session:

  • Basic information on the Web Push notification
  • How Web Push notification is implemented by Service workers.  

Automated accessibility testing by Anshul Mathur

This session comprised of:

  • Statistics about accessibility testing accomplishments.
  • Problems regarding manual testing for unveiling accessibility issues.
  • Demonstration of their solution and its benefits. 

Day 2 ended with “Selenium 3 bug bash showcase” followed by a closing talk.

Selenium Conference 2016

Full of ideas and learnings , we are already looking forward to the next Selenium Conference.

QA Team

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