TestPlant, the developer of robotic test tool product eggPlant, has announced the release of its most advanced revision to date – eggPlant v11.  

eggPlant is a powerful test tool that creates a visual depiction of GUIs and screens, enabling software test engineers to automate the testing of screens through ‘search and compare’. This technique is entirely non-invasive – a unique and invaluable feature for testers in industries such as defense, security, media and medical devices.

The new version of eggPlant adds a number of new features that will enhance the ease and efficiency of automation testing. These include a fully integrated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine driven by ABBYY, the leader in commercial OCR; SenseTalk scripting improvements and script search enhancements and full support for Mac OS X Lion.

George Mackintosh, chief executive for TestPlant said: “Software development and testing is an extremely important, challenging and highly-specialist field that can be aided significantly by adding intelligent automation wherever possible. However, test automation in itself isn’t an infallible solution to the many pain-points experienced by software test engineers. That is why we developed the first version of eggPlant, an intelligent robotic visual test tool that looks at and tests screens in a similar way to an expert human eye. And that is also why we continue to revise and improve eggPlant with smart features such as OCR and native Mac OS X Lion support that meet the exacting demands of the software testing industry and make the lives of the engineers we value so highly that little bit easier.”

All existing eggPlant users will be able to upgrade within their existing contracts, with the OCR engine automatically installed without the need for any reconfiguration. The new OCR feature in particular has been added in direct response to heavy demand from eggPlant’s existing 500-strong user community.  

TestPlant’s extensive beta testing has seen dramatic results for OCR across industries, including:
●    Defense – Better cross-platform and secure end-to-end testing of mission critical systems.
●    Mobile – Validating text across platforms is now easier and faster
●    Finance – Better data driven testing of trading, forex apps and online banking
●    Retail – Testing point of sale terminals. BI and ERP systems becomes easier
●    Media and Gaming – Better text recognition in Flash applications
●    Healthcare – Enhanced text recognition on healthcare devices