Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Documentation answer regarding browsers in private browsing -- About the interaction of the cache and eValid test playbacks.

The future of automated web testing -- The furauter is always hard to predict, but here are some thoughts about where we see automated testing going in the future.

Question regarding screen sizes -- Big screen vs. small screen and some of the issues in regarding to engineering tests that work appropriately.

Having a problem w/eValid on security testing application -- Some general advice about handling eValid behavior across browser versions. 

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

eValid taking a long time to load a page -- Wondering about why playback is taking so long? Here are some clues to be looking for.

iPad vs Desktop -- Here are some extended comments about using eValid in "mobile device emulation mode".

Site analysis question -- And, in answer to a common-enough question, yes, eValid CAN run Site Analysis checks while it is imitating a non-PC (non-desktop) device.

Trouble with structural commands -- Here are some suggestions about how to use eValid structural testing commands to match a string expressed as a regular expression.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Currently using JMeter...Why is eValid better? -- For a variety of reasons...let us count the ways!

Can eValid save a part of my screen? -- How-to's on screen saving and comparison.

Using eValid on Windows 7 64-bit OS -- It works fine, but you have to do the installation correctly.

How do I stop my eValid script when an error is detected? -- The right way to set up and use the Alarm-processing commands. 

Special ONE Performance Testing Offer

Our fixed price performance test projects can give you a tremendous amount of insight for ONE very attractive combination of features and delivery times.

• ONE test script — you get to choose.
• ONE KPI (Key Performance Indicator) within that test.
• ONE thousand Browser Users (BUs) ramped up over ONE thousand seconds.
• In ONE elapsed week from start to finish.
• At ONE low, very affordable price: < $1K.

Our experience shows that 99% of the time the 1-1,000 users ramp-up will identify all your web application performance problems. In other words, you'll get your bottleneck answers quickly. Here is a summary of this special ONE Offer. You can order your ONE Test Project here.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Question regarding Virtual Users -- Some of the details about VUs vs. BUs.

Test brittleness question -- Why making tests as bulletproof as possible is a good thing!

Script modifying question -- Some of the factoids about script editing!

Differences between the kinds of testing -- How testing devices, tablets, PCs, smartphones are alike -- and differences.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

eValid taking a long time to load a page -- Here is a question about possible performance issues when you are using eValid to scan a web page using a regular respression (R.E.) match criteria.

A way to record Alarm commands w/o having to edit them -- Editing eValid commands is really easy, but it seems it is always better of the test engineer can record every thing -- including Alarms -- from the GUI. Here's how...

Help with ID tags that are autogenerated... -- Always a problem because ID tags are so important to keep constant to simplify testing. But here are some ways to overcome this issue.

My application doesn't display well on eValid -- If the web server uses "non-standard" constructions, i.e. HTML that does not meet the minimal standard that is imposed by IE, then you can expect problems. Here is some detail on how to contend with this.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

eValid versus WebDriver -- A short comment, probably of interest to everyone, about how eValid compares with the WebDriver open-source web driving solution.

Can I use eValid's DOM ability to change a value. -- It may surprise you but yes, eValid can actually read and write from/to the current page's DOM. This post points out how you do this with simple eValid commands.

What do you mean by: "recording protocol" -- Some types of websites, AJAX applications for example, can have tests recorded "out of the box" so that they incorporate self-synchronizing capability, using a special way of making the recording.

Special Methods -- Very often we are asked, how did we build eValid? This post gives you a rough outline of how eValid is built and maintained.

eValid -- SmartPhone/Tablet Leverage Analysis

Summary
The eValid Patents are key resources of importance to companies involved in the mobile device space (tablets and smartphone) because they apply to the way in which web applications for these platforms are developed and delivered.

The Mobile Device Space

Among the ~5 Billion cellphones and tablets in the world, ~1 Billion are smartphones or web enabled tablets. The device counts are growing rapidly.

Apps (including web apps) that run on these devices are equally numerous. The Apple app store has ~700K iPhone and iPad apps (~400K iPhone and ~300K iPad). Google has recently (October 2012) tied Apple with over ~700K Android apps.

Major suppliers of SDKs for these tablet/smartphone devices include: Apple's iOS 10.n; Google's Android SDK; Microsoft's VS2010/2012 on W8/RT, and Surface SDK 8.0; Blackberry's BB10 SDK; Mozilla's Firefox OS's SDK; Samsung's variant of Android SDK; Ubuntu's variant of Android SDK; and Tizen's Magnolia SDK.

Web App Qualification Support
Most suppliers control/gate the entry of [web] apps into their [web] app "store" via some kind of QA certification, supported for their devices in their own SDKs. All suppliers (except Microsoft) rely on the WebKit Rendering Engine, originally developed for the Apple Safari browser and now open-sourced; Microsoft relies on its proprietary Trident Rendering Engine, used in the IE browser family.

Wherever the WebKit base is used, the above SDK's use test engines that rely on the Selenium browser-based Google WebDriver API, already a defacto standard and now a W3C Working Draft on the way to becoming the standard. Microsoft uses VS2010/2012's CUIT browser driver.

The existence in all of the suppliers' systems of support for HTML5 assures that even native apps for mobile platforms will easily migrate to full featured web apps.

Web apps need careful and thorough testing before being accepted for inclusion in one of the app stores. Such web application testing involves utilizing features and capabilities that are the subject of the eValid patent portfolio. Such capabilities include the ability to synchronize AJAX testing via DOM interrogation, the ability to test internal page content with DOM extraction, and the ability to provide detailed timing/performance data based on collecting fine-scale DOM-centric data about web page behavior.

Conclusion
The eValid patents thus represent an extremely valuable resource to any company involved in this technology area.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Using eValid to test a website in Hindi -- Just a reminder: eValid does have DBCS capability but only in the international Edition.

Trouble with a form webpage -- Here is a simple explanation of how to adjust an eValid script to handle a web-form "click on this" action by adding in the NO_NAV tag on the eValid commands.

Structural Testing Question -- An overview and key documentation pages about how to use eValid in Structural Testing mode in which actions are taken on the Document Object Model (DOM) behind the web page that you see.

Trouble with a button using IndexClick command -- More detail on handling intended and unintended browser naviations, picking up where the above post left off.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Can eValid's "Manager" convert my tests -- How eValid organizes tests into projects, groups, and tests within a group for easy regression test tree creation.

eValid vs CUIT Question -- Details on how eValid and VS2014's CUIT system overlap.

eValid can't log in to my application -- Some hints on overcoming this common issue.

Using eValid to test a website in Hindi -- Comments about using eValid's International Edition, which supports all 2-byte chracter sets (DBCSs).

Selected Recent Forum Postings

 Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Number of Tests Question -- More discussion about geting more and more and more tests in parallel.

 Using eValid as building blocks for an application -- Suggestions about possible eValid product component deliverable(s) that you could put in your own product.

 A question on eV.Manager -- Some key details about eV.Manager -- the eValid automated regression controller.

 Running a test suite on alt browser -- Some pointers for using eValid to simulate (imitate) non-IE browsers for non-desktop devices.

Scaling Issues in Mobile Testing

The number of different mobile devices keeps growing. According to a Ryan Lawler post, some 7,000 Different Types Of Mobile Devices Access Facebook Every Day . Daily. And this was in 2012. The total number of combinations that may need to be tested is surely growing.

Two factors are involved: the number of different browser versions (currently > 500) and the number of different device development environment versions (currently > 100). You have to multiply these two factors to get the total "perfect" test count. Two factors are involved: the number of different browser versions (currently > 500) and the number of different device development environment versions (currently > 100). You have to multiply these two factors to get the total "perfect" test count.

Hence, scale is clearly important if you are working on testing mobile web applications. With that many device-browser combinations it becomes quite difficult to obtain actual instances of all of these devices. While some service solutions we've seen offer direct device tests of several hundred combinations, using actual devices that are controlled remotely, device-browser combinations in the 1,000's or 10,000's just aren't feasible economically.

eValid can overcome a major part of that difficulty with its ability to imitate other any browser. eValid can do this when launched from a command line option, or it can do this in individual subwindows launched inside a playback script using the SetUserAgent Command. The result is a quick -- and highly scalable -- method to test a web application in a variety of browsers.

The behavior variations between browsers can be quite remarkable, as this Mobile Agent Demonstration Experiment shows. For these 20 different mobile device browsers it's important to note how the pages vary, and how big the variations are in the downloaded file size. For good measure, here are Selected Screenshots for 200+ Mobile Devices.

Using eValid's device imitation feature it's possible to run full-realism, dynamic tests on 1,000's of browser variations by just putting the playback process in a loop, each repetition trying a different setting. Web application validation — an otherwise very difficult task to to with 100% thoroughness — becomes much easier because you can use a single test appliance with great scaling leverage.

Customer Finds Mobile Performance Flaw

We heard from an eValid user about a novel use of the internal timing capability to track down and fix a problem that only appeared when the application was viewed with evalid imitating a mobile device.

Their testing process involved setting up timing measurements within the DOM using the structural commands. The timing data let them to identify the fixes that were needed, and the same test setup was used to verify the performance improvement that was evident on the mobile device.
Here is the writeup they provided describing these results:


Click image for full size version

Quality Week Proceedings Available

The complete conference proceedings for the QualityWeek and QualityWeek/Europe conferences - from 1998 to 2002 - are now available for download. 

The files below are the complete contents of the Conference CDs unified into a single PDF document.

Caution: The PDF are big files, this may take some time to download.

1999	QW1999CD.pdf -- 32 MB -- [1,816 pages] QWE1998CD.pdf -- 20 MB -- [1,251 pages]
2000	QW2000CD.pdf -- 82 MB -- [1,712 pages] QWE2000CD.pdf -- 147 MB -- [1,712 pages]
2001	QW2001CD.pdf -- 72 MB -- [2,070 pages]
2002	QWE2002CD.pdf -- 100 MB -- [1,300 pages] QW2002CD.pdf -- 65 MB -- [1,783 pages]

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:
 
eValid's Pagemap vs Chrome's inspect element -- They reallly are two different ways to do the same thing, only eValid's Pagemap is more focused on testing aspects.

Using eValid for a Facebook logout -- Here's a neat structural testing sequence for a tricky FaceBook logout.

Help with starting 2500 users at the same time. -- Some timing tricks to help synchronize 2,500 simultaneous users.

Monitoring Agent Question -- Distinguishing eValid Monitoring Master and Agent Stations.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

eValid Perks -- Using the IndexFind and DOM Manipulation technology items in eValid.

Can eValid find a particular element -- What WE like best (and are most product of) in eValid!

Popup Question -- Popups are always tricky, but here is the simple procedure that always works.

eValid the Best for Monitoring AJAX Applications -- Some reasons why using a full browser makes SO much sense!

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Why is scaling so important? -- Some practical answers that point to one of evalid's best selling points.

 eValid rendering Chrome question All about rendering, and does it make a difference or not in doing regression testing of web applications.

 Using eValid to monitor a page being hacked -- The key requirement for eValid to detect a page having been hacked is to have some kind of checksum of the page.

  LoadRunner vs. eValid question -- Why eValid's archtecture precludes the need for a "correlation capability."

eValid Component Licensing Options

With the recent completion of the primary set of eValid Patents, we have begun to set up offerings of key eValid technologies as part of the eValid Business Development activity.

Our technology covers virtually all functions needed for client-side analysis of web browser enabled applications including performance, timing, behavior, quality, security, and reliability. The technology is effectively a "one stop shop" for client-view web application testing and analysis.

If you are interested in eValid components for your own application you ought to look at the available Component Descriptions.

Please contact us directly for additional details.

JavaScript Error in JQuery Examples

A little-known feature of eVald -- but which many eValid users know about and use regularly -- is it's ability to identify JavaScript errors. During test playback, when the browser is active and processing intake of JavaScript components, any JavaScript errors that are detected by the JavaScript thread are reported in the playback EventLog.

Usually such errors are not important, and are caused mostly by typos or other small flaws that do not interfere with operation of the page that includes them. However, we have found a case in which a very severe problem is traced to a JavaScript fault. How the JQueryMobile site's demos page locks up (and how the eValid playback detects the faulty JavaScript passage) is described here: JQueryMobile JavaScript Error Explanation

The "JQuery Mobile 1.3.2 Demos" version, which causes the problem, is labeled as a Legacy Version. The more recent JQuery Mobile 1.4.2 Demos" version works fine! Obviously someone fixed the problem in the excellent JQuery Mobile product!

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Why is doing my web security test from within a browser -- Many have asked "why is the from-the-browser view so important? Here is part of the answer.

Require any special permission to analyze a website -- Just a confirmation: no access credentials needed to browse or test a public website.

Site Analysis slows after 1000 pages. Problems??? -- Indeed, there are, after all, only computers, and therefore in com instances you do get a performance hit.

Question on rendering difference checkers -- More about the issue of how pages render in different browser's renderers.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Easier time when dealing with AJAX -- The easy way to make sure an AJAX application yields a reliable (self-synchronizing) test playback.

Question that have to do with reporting engines -- Details about the SQL interface that is available through the eValid Programmatic Interface (EPI).

Security Testing -- A simple illustration of how to find non-trivial vulnerabilities.

The easiest way to get 1000 users launched on one machine -- It isn't magic at all -- just the application of basic software engineering skills.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here are some selected posts from our eValid forum:

Load Testing for a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) -- This is the right way to do things: Choose a KPI and focus your testing efforts on that particular metric.

Maximum number of BUs on Windows 8 -- Everyone want to know, how many can I run on MY machine? Here are some of our estimates.

How accurate is the eValid's emulation of a mobile device -- eValid can imitate any device, including all moblie devices (tablets, smartphones). The key information about web performance, time delays and data counts, are measured very accurately.

 What is the most powerful command in eValid? -- Not a contest, but our opinion: IndexFindElementEx is easily the most powerful and flexible command in eValid's command set.

Special ONE Offer for Mobile Testing Project

Here is an offer that is going to be hard to refuse, if you care about supporting your web application on mobile devices.

Our fixed price performance test projects can give you a tremendous amount of insight for ONE very attractive combination of features and delivery times.

• ONE test script.
• ONE KPI (Key Performance Indicator) within that test.
• ONE thousand Browser Users (BUs) ramped up over ONE thousand seconds.
• In ONE elapsed week from start to finish.
• At ONE low, very affordable price.

Our experience shows that for most web apps the 1-1,000 users rampup will shake out 99% of your performance problems. All you need to provide is a description of your web application (with any necessary login credentials), and an indication of what KPI you want to measure.
Here is a summary of this special ONE Offer. Here is where to start up your ONE Test Project.

Solving JRE Issues on Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1

In the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1, special care has to be taken to allow the Java applets that generate the EventLog based applets, and the site analysis 3D-SiteMap applet to excute.

Here is an updated page from eValid's Documentation that describes how to overcome these security: Java JRE SiteMap Troubleshooting.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of recent posts and responses on the eValid User Forum:

Page Rending Errors -- Here are some comments about how eValid renders pages, compared with other browsers.

The easiest way to get 1000 users launched on one machine -- Tricks to use in making sure you get 1,000 separate users running at the same time from a single machine.

 Handle complex intra-browser data manipulation -- eValid can read and interact with a page's DOM and here are some of the basic concepts involved in use of this powerful capability.

Does eValid work on Windows as well as web apps -- One unique aspect of eValid is the integration of both desktop and web application support -- seamlessly even. This post gives some details about how this is done.

eValid Used In Software Testing World Cup Contest

In a novel event in the software testing community, an experienced eValid user, Mr. Raymond Rivest, will be part of a team competing in the Software Testing World Cup (STWC) on 25 April 2014. The team will be using the eValid suite for site scanning and performance testing

The STWC contest features six regional competitions – North America, Oceania, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe – held between 25 April 2014 and 19 July 2014. The six regional events
have each team allocated a 3-hour period during which they will all try to test the same web application. The test target won't be specified until the start of the contest period so every team is on an equal footing. Each regional event picks one winning team.

All six regional winners will travel to Potsdam, Germany for the final competition on 10 November 2014. The ultimate winner receives a cash award of €3000.
 
The STWC event is organized by the Berlin Management Consulting firm of Diaz Hilterscheid GmbH.

Upcoming eValid Webinar

Load Testing Mobile Web Apps

8 May 2014, 11:00 AM PDT

WEBINAR REGISTRATION

eValid is a self-contained one-stop solution that provides functional and performance testing of all kinds of Mobile applications. You can write structurally oriented tests that are invulnerable to application changes and still have the ability to make very fine-detail performance measurements -- entirely from the client perspective.

Then, you can run 100's or 1,000's of simultaneous "browser user" sessions to simulate 100% real activity of users driving your mobile application.

In this webinar you'll learn these important lessons:

• Mobile Web App Functional Testing: How to create perfectly reliable AJAX tests for mobile applications, running on ANY device, using out-of-the-box recording methods, including handling complex AJAX playback synchronization issues.

• Setting up LoadTest Scenarios: How to organize one or multiple eValid mobile functional tests for meaningful server loading experiments.

• Running LoadTests: How to run 100's or 1,000's, or even 10,000's of eValid Browser Users (BUs) against your server.

• Collecting Realistic Data: How to extract detailed performance from the mobile web application servers to identify performance bottlenecks and issues.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

How accurate is the eValid's emulation of a mobile device -- Notes about accuracy of eValid in device emulation mode.

 What is the most powerful command in eValid? -- We took a pool, and IndexFindElementEX won

 Easier time when dealing with AJAX -- The simple way to create a reliable self-synchronizing script for an AJAX application that you can do from the GUI.

 Question that have to do with reporting engines -- Answers about how to feed data from eValid to different kinds of reporting engines.

New eValid V9 Documentation Update

As eValid users know, the online version of the eValid documentation is modified and updated regularly. This version is viewable from the eValid browser face via the eValid: Help > Documentation > User Manual menu pulldown.
Some users, for convenience and flexibility, also want to have the eValid doumentation available as an offline document in PDF. We provide that file in the standard eValid License Support Page that accompanies each eValid installation. Our recent updates to the PDF version bring it into complete synchrony with the online version. Fair warning: it is a hefty document with 1,695 pages of detailed material.
Regular eValid users can obtain their copy from their regular password-protect product delivery license page. Non-users who wish to take a look can make a request and if approved we will provide you the link to this file. Please Use the Contact Us page to make this request.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• How accurate is the eValid's emulation of a mobile device -- Notes about accuracy of eValid in device emulation mode. 
• What is the most powerful command in eValid? -- We took a pool, and IndexFindElementEX won. 
• Easier time when dealing with AJAX -- The simple way to create a reliable self-synchronizing script for an AJAX application that you can do from the GUI. 
• Question that have to do with reporting engines -- Answers about how to feed data from eValid to different kinds of reporting engines. 

New eValid Patent Issued

We are pleased to report that another eValid patent has been issued, effective 25 March 2014. US Patent #8,683,447 is the seventh patent in the eValid patent portfolio.

In addition to the issued eValid Patents several additional applications are before the USPTO for consideration.

If you are working in the general area of web testing you may want to look into the possibility of basing your efforts on the technology that eValid offers. Please see eValid BizDev Opportunities for details.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• Load Scenario Design Question -- Notes about how to plan a LoadTest "scenario," which is a general plan for how you would impose load on a server using eValid in multiple-instance mode. 
• Load Testing for a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) -- The key performance indicator can often be used as the objective function in a server loading project, and here are some hints. 
• Maximum number of BUs on Windows 8 -- This is the natural enough question, and here are some estimates based on our experience. 
• eValid Monitoring advantages? -- The main advantage of eValid in montoring mode is accurate and realistic client-side emulation and measurement. 

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• Capturing text from one field to another -- A complex question, but one that eValid can do using features within the "structural testing" support set. 
• What is the best way to manipulate the values on a page -- An example of how to handle parametric operation of a test script using the "data synthesis" mode that is built into eValid. 
• Handle complex intra-browser data manipulation -- Description of methods that can be used to perform some complex operations in real-time on a current browser page. 
• Does eValid work on Windows as well as web apps -- Yes, eValid has multipe modes (native, emulated, application and desktop) that give it some cool capabilities. 

New eValid Version Supports Windows 8.1 and IE 11

We're pleased to let you know that the latest eValid version has been proved out on Windows 8.1 with IE11. The range of operating systems now includes Windows 2000/2008, XP, Vista, and Windows 7 in addition to Windows 8.1. eValid is operational with all IE versions including IE 8, IE 9, IE 10, and now IE 11.

By way of some stats, our internal test suite of ~350 tests runs in 4-6 hours on each of the platforms. Only when every test shows no FAILs does eValid advance from mechnical testing to the final-release stage.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• I need to find a specific "target" button on my page .. -- When the target of an action is not known precisely, it's still possible to find it based on what it's near. 
• How easy is it to have my test script(s) interact -- Some simple explanations of how eValid is organized internally to be a powerful "web driver". 
• Can eValid show me the HTML that exist AFTER .. -- This must be AJAX: lots of HTML doesn't arrive when you see "done" and eValid has a range of methods to take care of that kind of activity...with complete reliability. 
• Does eValid have a way of getting the element .. -- Here are some comments about how evalid and the DOM interact relative to the screen that you're working with. And this gives you a sense of what is true and not true about absolution positions on the screen.

New eValid Patent Issued

We are pleased to report that another eValid patent has been issued, effective 11 February 2014. US Patent #8,650,493 is the sixth patent in the eValid patent portfolio.

In addition to the issued eValid Patents several additional applications are before the USPTO for consideration.

If you are working in the general area of web testing you may want to look into the possibility of basing your efforts on the technology that eValid offers. Please see eValid BizDev Opportunities for details.

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• Test scripts click on a page element that's not visible? -- Yes, there are LOTS of page elements that don't contribute to something you see on the screen. No worries; you can still send and event to them if you want! 
• My license key says it expires on a specific date... -- eValid license keys' expiration dates give the first date after which the license has expired.
• Is there any way to run a search on a specific string... -- The DOM mainipulation commands in eValid let you do this easily. 
• Can eValid do both web and desktop testing? -- Yes, the web mode (normal mode) and application mode are integrated seamlessly. Web mode is better, as you would expect, but application mode works cleanly too. 

Selected Recent Forum Posts

Here is a selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

• Can you record & play MS's new Outlook.com application? -- Sure can, and this article shows now it's done. 
• Test availability and performance factors for mobile apps? -- From the perspective of a client, eValid can easily measure all kinds of internal parameters about how a server delivers data to a mobile client. It just means imitating the client, as explained in this response. 
• Having Trouble Getting eValid Installed -- Normally installation is a no-brainer; a maintenance update drops right on top of a current installation. For non-standard installations there are special techniques you can use. 
• How can I chain multiple eValid tests together? -- Getting the amplification of sequencing multiple tests is easy, as long as you take care to use the "one function/feature = one test" rule.