[QF-Test] QF-Test 4.0.9 released and important news about Firefox tests

• Subject: [QF-Test] QF-Test 4.0.9 released and important news about Firefox tests
• From: Gregor Schmid <Gregor.Schmid@?.de>
• Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2015 18:11:11 +0100

Dear QF-Test users,

for the benefit of those that don't receive our newsletter the
technical details of new QF-Test releases are also announced on this
mailing list. My apologies if you receive this information twice.

Should you be interested in subscribing to the full newsletter please
send an informal email with subject "Subscribe Newsletter" to
<newsletter@?.de>.


If you are not testing any web applications with QF-Test, this is just
another minor update. For QF-Test/web however, this release is a
turning point that I'd like to introduce with a personal note:

There is both good news and bad. If you prefer to read the bad news
first, start with section 2. The good news follows in section 3.

As you will see, it's not that bad. In fact, the balance is clearly
positive and though I personally disagree with the direction in which
Mozilla is heading with Firefox, it is their choice and we have to
accept it. In a way I'm even grateful for being forced to look beyond
our current concept and embrace a new technology. We already had it on
our agenda but now we're really moving and we'll take that momentum
into next year. I'm looking forward to that :-).

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your families

    Greg and the whole QFS Team

             *
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           o ^ o
          > > > >
         o ô ô ô ô
            | |


 1. QF-Test Version 4.0.9 released
 =================================

QF-Test version 4.0.9 is now available for download from

    https://www.qfs.de/en/qftest/download.html

This release brings support for Firefox 43 and fixes some minor issues.


 2. Goodbye Firefox
 ==================

Firefox is evolving rapidly. It has changed a lot since the adoption
of the new release schedule with version 5 in April 2011:

   https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2011/04/13/new-channels-for-firefox-rapid-releases/

For most end-users this is good news but not necessarily for business
users. Many changes are radical and backwards compatibility is not
among the design goals:

    https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/05/04/dropping-support-for-binary-components/

It has taken longer than initially announced, but with Firefox version
44, due for release in January 2016, the foundations on which the
native Firefox support of QF-Test is built upon are finally being
uprooted and replaced with a Javascript-only API that simply does not
work for us. To make a long story short: Firefox 43 is the last
version of Firefox that QF-Test is going to support with our current
native interface.

For a while, this is barely going to be a problem. The parts of
Firefox that are employed during QF-Test-based web tests - namely the
Gecko Rendering Engine and the Javascript implementation - aren't
evolving as fast as the rest. If you stick with Firefox version 43,
your web tests will continue to run and be fully valid. By the time
Firefox has changed so much that it really makes a difference - much
earlier in fact - we expect to have our new solution ready for
production use. See the next section for details.

As already mentioned in our last newsletter:

We strongly suggest that you clearly differentiate between personal
use and test automation. For general use, take the latest, most secure
version of your preferred browser. For test automation we need
stability, reliability and long-term consistency. To that end we
advise to install a dedicated test browser into a separate directory,
either Firefox version 43 or, preferably, the latest Firefox ESR
release, currently at version 38.5.0. See

    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

for further information. Of course, automatic updates should be
disabled for this test browser.


 3. Welcome back Firefox and hello Edge, Safari and Opera
 ========================================================

For the upcoming medium QF-Test upgrade 4.1 we are working on a new
approach for interacting with web browsers, based on the WebDriver API
for controlling browsers, which is an upcoming W3C standard:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/webdriver/

The major advantages of this approach are:

 * Immediate access to all browsers that support this API directly or
   for which drivers exist. Besides Chrome, Internet Explorer and
   Firefox this includes Edge, Safari and Opera.

 * Reduced dependency on operating system and CPU architecture (no
   more 32 or 64 bit limitation). This includes support for Chrome on
   Linux or OS X and Safari on OS X and later mobile browsers.

 * Possibility of combining QF-Test with Selenium based tests

 * Compatibility with existing QF-Test web tests - within the limits
   of WebDriver - including support for AJAX toolkits and custom
   resolvers.

 * As WebDriver evolves and improves QF-Test will automatically
   improve as well.

Of course our current support for Internet Explorer, Chrome and
Firefox (up to version 43) is going to be maintained and improved -
e.g. with 64 bit Support on Windows. It will remain our primary web
engine simply because embedding the browsers and driving them via
their native API is far more powerful and efficient. While we try to
exploit the WebDriver technology to its limits to run QF-Test on it,
web test execution via WebDriver is still significantly slower and not
as complete as the native approach.

Our goal is to achieve as much replay compatibility as possible and
also to enable basic recording features via WebDriver. Most likely
test development will primarily take place with the established
embedded QF-Test browsers while test replay and browser coverage can
be enhanced to a much wider range.


 4. Release Notes for QF-Test Version 4.0.9
 ==========================================

New features:
-------------

* Support was added for Firefox version 43.


Bugs fixed:
-----------

* QF-Test now cleanly handles exceptions caused by Excel files with
  functions that are not directly supported by Apache POI.

* When checking the image of a JavaFX component QF-Test now makes sure
  that the target is scrolled into view first and that geometry
  changes from focus borders are compensated.

* Synchronization with JavaFX events during replay has been further
  improved.

* Text input in a browser could get recorded as a mix of text input
  and keystroke events.

* For the AJAX framework ZK it is now possible to check the
  enabled/disabled state of TabFolder items.

* Recognition of web components was broken in case of leading or
  trailing whitespace in the name of a FRAME node.

* Setting the browser's user agent during startup now also works for
  Chrome.

--
Gregor Schmid

E: gregor.schmid@?.de
T: +49 8171 38648-11
F: +49 8171 38648-16

Quality First Software GmbH | www.qfs.de
Tulpenstr. 41 | 82538 Geretsried | Germany
GF Gregor Schmid, Dr. Martina Schmid, Karlheinz Kellerer
HRB München 140833

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