Selenium is a high quality open source test automation tool for web application testing. Selenium runs in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh, Safari on the Mac, with plans to support Safari on iPhone soon. Selenium test scripts are portable, can be run from browsers (using Selenium IDE) or from JUNit or NGUnit (using Selenium RC) etc.. For example, test scripts written using Selenium IDE in Firefox on Windows can run on Firefox in Mac or Linux, without changing any code. Selenium tests run directly in browsers and so matches the end-user experience closely.

There are three variants of Selenium, which can be used in isolation or in combination to create complete automation test suite for your web applications.

• Selenium Core - In Selenium Core the tests scripts (written in HTML) and the Selenium Test Runner (written in Javascript) are uploaded to the same web server that hosts the application you are trying to test. It is a simpler form of Selenium, and suitable for non-developers, but it has some inherent limitations.
• Selenium IDE - Selenium IDE is a Firefox plugin, which includes the entire Selenium Core, allows you to record, play back, edit, and debug tests in browser. It provides the simplest introduction to Selenium and is highly recommended for beginners. You can save the tests / test suite created in xml or html format. However to run them in an automated fashion you need Selenium Remote Control which is described next.
• Selenium Remote Control - The Selenium Remote Control allows you to develop test cases and test suites in Java (supports JUnit & NGUnit), PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl and even .NET. It is the most flexible setup but requires some development knowledge to set up and use.
• Selenium Grid - Selenium Grid allows several Selenium Remote Control servers to be accessed in parallel by Selenium Grid server. This is extremely useful for automated load and stress testing of web applications.

Today we will discuss on how you can easily create automatic test scripts using Selenium IDE and convert them to JUnit tests (which uses Selenium Remote Control) which can be added to your JUnit based automatic regression test suite.
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Selenium Remote Control (RC) is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application UI tests in many programming languages against any HTTP website using any mainstream JavaScript-enabled browser. Selenium RC is a powerful and simple framework for running (scheduled or manually) automated UI centric regression tests for web applications / services. Here are few simple tips for Selenium RC java client. I used JUnit for tests. You can use NGUnit too.

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Ever since we installed Comment Guard Pro, anti comment-spam plugin on this blog, it stopped over 1 millon spam comments (1001011 spam comments were blocked by Angsuman's Comment Guard plugin in 335 days 8 hours 38 minutes. 99.338 % of the comments received during this time were spam.) so far (look in the right sidebar for latest stats). The pro version of the plugin is now being tested on this blog and other sites.

In Comment Guard Pro have developed multiple layers of defense to stop all kind of comment spams - spams submitted using comment forms (robotic or by humans), pingback spam, trackback spam and referrer spam.

Comment Guard Pro is a modular plugin where each module acts as independent spam filters. Many modules are developed with technologies developed in-house. Others leverage best existing technologies out there. You can also develop and add your own modules as well as share it with others.

So far it is all-green on QA front, only minor defects and enhancements.

UPDATE: Comment Guard Pro has been released.

Cross-browser and cross-platform testing is a bane as well as a requirement for web applications. Consider Internet Explorer on Windows. There are two major version 6 & 7, not to mention still used 5.5. You need to either use different machines or multi-boot machines or use hacks to run them simultaneously or virtualization software like VMWare; not of them are really easy to setup and use for common web developer. Then you have Opera & Firefox (we develop in Firefox so it gets tested first in our case). Did I mention testing on Mac with Safari, Firefox and other browsers? Oh, and don't forget Linux too. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Let's see how you can solve most of these problems.

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Angsuman's Translator Plugin Pro 5.0 will be released on 13th June.

Angsuman's Translator Plugin Gold (32+1 Language translation) will be released on 13th June. This is a limited edition release. Only 100 copies will ever be released. Each will cost $100. Existing users of ATPP will be offered a discounted price of 80$ for upgrading ATPP to ATP Gold. ATP Gold will come with array of features targeted for popular blogs. Advanced load distribution and load protection measures will be provided.

Please advance book your copies for ATP Gold now by sending me an email ( angsuman [at] taragana [com] ) or commenting on this post to let us know about your intention (your comment may not be published but will be processed). This is a one time release only. Unlimited free upgrades will be provided.

Existing ATPP customers will receive their upgrade within June 30th. We are providing web based access to your plugin which can be downloaded at anytime from our website (url will be released soon). This will be in addition to email based update. In future any upgrades will be on the same date as general release for all existing customers.

Our products have been extensively tested on variety of browsers and operating systems. We test various themes and compatibility with third party plugins. In short we go the whole nine yards to make it a high quality product for you.

Remember with Taragana products (ATPP & ATP Gold) you will get unlimited free upgrades. You will also receive free support for 6 months. In short we will make it work on your blog, we won't leave you hanging midway as with many open source products. You get what you pay for. Our success is defined by your success and satiisfaction.

Update: Please book your copies now as they are running out fast.

We are currently processing huge amount of sensitive corporate data for a Fortune 500 company as the first phase of a project. You have to be very careful in data processing, much more than any standard programming effort. Here are few tips you may find useful when programming to process sensitive data in bulk. Get your best (wo)men on the job.

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Mantis is popular php based defect tracking application which works on top of RDBMS like MySQL and PostgreSQL. Recently I ported our Windows based Mantis installation to Linux. It used MySQL as backend. Here are the steps:
1. Export Mantis MySQL database from Windows, upload it on Linux and then import it to MySQL database on Linux. You can find detailed instructions for exporting and importing MySQL database here.

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In our effort to fully switchover to Linux as Desktop and Server environment, one of the biggest challenges is to find an alternative to OpenSTA, a popular and very capable open source distributed software testing tool for regression, load and stress testing. In other words OpenSTA is poor man's alternative to LoadRunner & Silk.

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