Saturday, January 10, 2009

WebAii 2.0 – Automate more than you expect!

In the last few months, we've been working really hard on refining our WebAii 2.0 feature set and polishing our first beta that we hope to release in Q1 of 2009. The goal for WebAii 2.0 is to enable a broader list of automation scenarios that were not possible in previous versions, address customer pain-points and expand our support to span the latest advancements in web development technologies. This has always been our promise to our customers and we believe WebAii 2.0 will delight our existing customers and will spur many to give WebAii a serious look. Let me outline some of our major features that we hope to preview in WebAii 2.0 beta:

  1. Safari/Chrome support: Yes, I have said it. WebAii 2.0 will support Safari (on Windows) and Google Chrome browsers. Our Beta support most probably will only contain the Safari support but future updates will incorporate Chrome support too. The great thing about this support is that you don't need to make any changes to your existing testcases if you are already using WebAii. Simply change the BrowserType setting to Safari or Chrome and watch your existing tests execute against that browser. WebAii's browser abstraction architecture is the key enabler to seamless browser integration. By adding this support we are enabling existing customers to expand their browser /compatibility testing.


  2. Silverlight Automation Support: WebAii 2.0 will incorporate our Silverlight Extension that we have been previewing in the last few months. Whether you are automating HTML or Silverlight or both, you will have a one-stop-shop library that enables you to automate any of these technologies


  3. Exposing the HTTP stack: In WebAii 2.0 in addition to having access to the browser DOM and the ability to manipulate it, we will also enable you to access/intercept and change the raw http requests between the browser and your web server. The HTTP stack will be wrapped in a clean object model that will enable you to intercept requests, modify requests/responses and measure raw http data for your test automation. This support will enable you to automate web scenarios within your test bed that were not possible before. You will be able to build synchronization points against specific http requests, test your page sizes for performance regression testing and potentially do some security testing by doing request/response tampering.


  4. Enhanced JavaScript support. We are taking JavaScript support in WebAii to new levels unheard of before J. Our HtmlControl suite will expand to contain a highly advanced architecture for JavaScript access. You will be able to access strongly typed JavaScript objects from your testcases, attach to native JavaScript events from .NET, pass JavaScript eventargs and map HtmlControls to pure JavaScript object instances. With such support, you should be able to fully automate and control your JavaScript with a clean object model.


In addition to the above features WebAii 2.0 will contain tons of feature requests that customers have been asking for in addition to tons of bug fixes. Our goal is to also release a 1.1 update by end of Feb 09 that will service many of the bug reported by customers directly or on the forums.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!