Welcome to the 54th issue!

Today, I stumbled upon a very interesting article on Why We Open Sourced Our Entire Product by Laura Cressman, the Co-Founder of QA Wolf.

I think it's a great move — and I'm not talking only about this particular tool. I hope that more and more companies will get inspired and decide to go open-source, too.

Why is that a good thing? Because we, software engineers, can have a real impact on the development of such tools by giving them constant feedback. And they, in return, can get even better by fitting our needs.

Just think for a moment what tools are the most talked about and the most used. Because it's the freely accessible and open-source solutions that come to my mind first.

Now, enjoy the news!

Dawid Dylowicz  

Capture Inbound and Outbound Email for Testing

Do you test applications that send or receive email? Mailsac makes that easy. No messing around with servers or DNS. Enterprise-ready security and privacy. Delivered with a simple interface and a powerful API. Get started for free.

mailsac.com  

What is Creative QA and How does it help improve product quality?

Jo Tan describes an intriguing concept of Creative QA that engages engineers, designers, testers and product to collaborate on setting the acceptance criteria.

A great addition to that is the importance of iteration and feedback that Sam Connelly wrote about.

medium.com  

How product managers can collaborate better with the QA team

These are some great pieces of advice on tackling common problems between QA and product managers that Vikram Goyal gives in this article.

medium.com  

Design testing. Quality Assurance and Product Design going hand-in-hand for great user experience

Here's an insightful article on testing software designs by Anna Kalemba where she explains why it's important and how it can be done for the web using some handy tools.

A decent complementary read on this matter is Design QA: a powerful but neglected step in Agile Development by Rutuja Jog.

tsh.io  

Ready for Test — A Symptom of a Poor Quality Culture

We all know the "Ready for test" column in our project management tools. But is it good to have one? Thomas Shipley brings up some fair points that challenge the usefulness of this practice.

tomdriven.dev  

The Role of QA in Sprint Planning

Wes Silverstein shares five key reasons why it's a good idea to participate in sprint planning meetings as a software tester and all of them look valid to me.

mindfulqa.com  

Advanced Page Object Pattern in Automated Testing Java Code

Anton Angelov shows a few code-heavy examples of using Factory and Page Object patterns in Java test automation.

automatetheplanet.com  

BDD Automation: from executable specifications to automated tests

Here's a meaty excerpt of John Ferguson Smart's book called BDD in Action which demonstrates the best way to implement BDD with Cucumber in Java test automation.

manning.com  

Hover in Cypress

OK, I'm surprised to find out that Cypress doesn't have a built-in hover() functionality! Luckily, Filip Hric shows how to build a custom one in this step-by-step guide.

filiphric.com  

Selenium Java Interview Questions and Answers

Although the test automation interviews are usually focused on much broader aspects than just one tool, this decent set of Selenium questions and answers prepared by Bijan Patel may come in handy when applying for such role.

qafox.com  

Effortless End-To-End Testing with Microsoft Playwright

In this clear guide, Niko Heikkilä explains why it's worth to consider Playwright as a tool for end-to-end web testing and shows how to get started.

nikoheikkila.fi  

Servers Performance Monitoring in JMeter

I used JMeter solely as a load testing tool and I didn't know it can be used for monitoring, too! Here's a nice guide by NaveenKumar Namachivayam explaining how to do it

qainsights.com  

Software Development Life Cycle in reality... 😂