Conversation With a Test Manager (Part I: The Basics)

A while ago we had a long conversation with a senior test manager at a big company about eValid, about eValid's technology, and about how this might all play out in his environment of tester/programmers. It was quite a long conversation, and we didn't make a recording (only notes), but here are some of the main issues he raised and how eValid answers them.

But eValid Only Runs On Windows, And Only On IE...
Yes, that's true right now, but eValid technology is currently being implemented in the FireFox build tree, using the current product as the design base. In the meantime, eValid already can "set user agent string" so that it can pretend to be ANY browser. We even have a fully worked
Illustration of User Agent String Modification.

But, Hey, eValid's Scripting Language is Non-Standard...
Actually, the eValid script language is more an automatically generated "command language" than it is a pure scripting (programming) language. We worked up a view of the eValid script language as a abstraction that implements a user controlled browser. The Abstract Model of eValid: Script Language View is the result. All of the eValid commands easily map into simple function calls (method invocations), following the internal Script Principles description.

But We Are Used to Writing Very Complex Testing Programs...
For applications where it is required, the EPI (eValid Programmatic Interface) provides users with full programming language support. The EPI feature is currently available for C++; versions for Java, VB, and PERL are being implemented.

Do You Expect Us To Guess the Properties of Page Elements...
Not at all. Access to DOM objects and all their detailed properties is done with the PageMap feature. Information from the PageMap display is bi-directional: you can click on the tree and/or click on the page, and you see the DOM specifics or page elements immediately.

So much for eValid technology and some of the main features. In Part II we'll look at the issues surrounding eValid's use of the "record/play" paradigm.