Welcome to the 249th issue!

The results of the State of Frontend 2024 survey are here!

What's there for testers?

• TypeScript has essentially become the go-to language,
• Developer (and testing) experience is becoming even more important,
• AI is believed to enhance test coverage while making testing more efficient,
• Cypress is still slightly more popular than Playwright. Selenium isn't mentioned.

And on top of that, I'm positively surprised that developers are involved in testing in 87% of cases. That's impressive.

You can also read an insightful overview of Frontend Trends: What to Expect in 2025 based on that report, compiled by Andrzej Wysoczański.

Happy testing! 🙂

Dawid Dylowicz  

UPDATED: Testmo — #1 Unified Test Management Tool

Testmo is the #1 unified modern test management tool. Now even better with rich & customizable PDF exports, new automation linking, automation fields, improved Jira add-on, better reports & much more. Boost your team's testing productivity and try Testmo for free.

testmo.com  

Good communication makes great software engineers

It's hard to disagree with Gaurav Singh's point of view. Good communication skills are especially important in the testing role.

automationhacks.io  

Introducing a QA Process to a new team

Joining a new team and wondering how to kick off testing processes? There are several detailed pieces of advice from the testing community on what to do.

Furthermore, Katja Obring shares a perspective of The Solo Tester's Dilemma: When Enterprise Metrics Don't Fit.

reddit.com  

Test like a developer, develop like a tester

Developers and testers can learn a lot from each other. It's an excellent take by Filip Hric on the importance of looking from a different perspective.

filiphric.com  

The risks of risk management

"It's not about eliminating risk entirely—because that's impossible. It's about managing it well enough to move forward with confidence."

Alan Page shares a few good thoughts.

In relation to that, Mike Harris suggests that Interpreting 'quality' in more than one way helps me uncover issues.

substack.com  

What does QA Shift-Left look like in a 2 Weeks Sprint?

Although the approaches to shift-left or in-sprint testing may vary, Jayson Labarrete provides a decent example.

medium.com  

How We Ruined Code Reviews

Pull request reviews are one of the quality gates. But is there a way to do it differently? Gil Zilberfeld suggests pair programming as a possible substitution.

everydayunittesting.com  

Optimizing Android Test Runs: Parsing Test Names and Implementing Orchestration

If you work on testing Android apps, Alexey Alter-Pesotskiy has a few helpful tips on making parallel test execution easier to handle.

testableapple.com  

Proven Strategies to Minimize End-To-End Test Flakiness

Are your tests flaky? They can fail for various reasons and Dennis Martinez explains several ways of solving them.

Also, Stefan Dirnstorfer says it may be worth doing something about Failing with grace: A tester's guide to error culture.

dev-tester.com  

What We Lose When We Ignore TDD?

Rafael Miguel makes a few good points about the benefits of practising Test-Driven Development, highlighting that it goes far beyond just making the code work.

This. among other things, is also emphasised by Team Merlin in their take on different Software Testability measures.

substack.com  

Ensure Pixel-Perfect Experiences with BrowserStack's Visual Testing Suite

Struggling with visual bugs that slip past functional tests? BrowserStack's Visual Testing Suite—featuring Percy, App Percy, and Visual Scanner—helps you catch inconsistencies early and deliver flawless UIs across 20,000+ devices. With seamless CI/CD integration and intelligent AI-powered visual testing, your team can ship faster with confidence. Get started for free!

browserstack.com  

Alternatves to Postman

Postman is a popular API testing tool, but given its focus on commercialisation, some people are looking for more lightweight and open-source alternatives. Here are some suggestions.

reddit.com  

Custom Cypress Should Read Assertion

Inspired by Playwright's powerful toHaveText() assertion, Gleb Bahmutov shows how to achieve a similar behaviour with Cypress.

glebbahmutov.com  

How to setup ReportPortal dashboards using attributes for test observability

Want to improve test observability? Gaurav Singh demonstrates how to set up and use the open-source tool ReportPortal for insightful test-related metrics.

automationhacks.io  

How to Use Playwright for Advanced Network Interception

If you're looking into validating your web app behaviour in failure scenarios, Balaji Kumarasamy shows a handy guide to validating that with Playwright tests.

Also, Rinkesh Patel shares a concise Recipe for managing Playwright tests for different deployment environments.

medium.com  

Is This the Future of UI Testing? Puppeteer + Claude AI's MCP

AI development is not stopping. In 17 minutes, Karthik K.K shows a live example of automating simple web app tests using just a few prompts.

Similarly, Beth Marshall explored using a couple of AI tools to Create Test Framework in Under Two Hours.

youtube.com  

QA Jobs Update December 2024

Following the mid-year update on the state of the QA job market, Alex Khvastovich does another great, comprehensive analysis.

youtube.com  

Sometimes automation pays off... 😂

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Dawid Dylowicz