SmartBear Software, the choice of more than two million software professionals for building and delivering the world’s best applications, has released a new version of TestComplete, taking further steps to enhance its mobile testing capabilities by providing support for recording object-oriented iOS and Android tests. Earlier this month, TestComplete earned its fourth Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Award since 2010 in the Best Testing Tools category.
Mobile application testing provides its own set of challenges, many of which can significantly inflate the testing effort needed to qualify new versions. Many mobile app development teams release frequently and often, which doesn’t leave much time for testing complicated scenarios required by mobile testing. Teams who are testing mobile applications without the benefit of automated tools may have to take shortcuts to meet deadlines, leaving areas of the application untested and compromising quality. Overall, many aspects of testing mobile devices often do not get the attention they need.
TestComplete 10.3’s recording capability makes mobile testing fast and easy. Providing support for recording object-oriented iOS and Android tests, TestComplete can now recognize application controls on-the-fly and record actions as control-specific test commands. TestComplete now automatically maps control names during recording, so testers no longer have to do this manually before creating tests. Add to that, TestComplete’s unique capability to create a library of gestures for both platforms so testers can easily insert them into their tests, allowing them to have ultimate flexibility in re-using tests with different gesture actions. With the new powerful mobile testing module, there is more time to test complicated scenarios like device fragmentation, carrier network quality and Wi-Fi availability.
In the past, the first step to mobile testing is asking your development team to instrument the app so your test framework can read it. TestComplete 10.3 eliminates this step by including automatic instrumentation for Android apps – just deploy it to your device and start testing. Additionally, TestComplete 10.3 adds a number of new properties for Android that allow testers to simulate device interactions like Location Services and Orientation.
Van L. Baker, Research VP and Jason Wong, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner note, “The combination of the rapid development cycles and the rapidly evolving mobile device market presents significant management challenges to the operations team. These teams need to understand the mix of OS releases, device hardware configurations and versions of rapidly evolving mobile applications. The impact on the operations teams will be significant, and organizations need to plan accordingly, because the management of the mobile platform will be fluid and demanding. The enterprise will have to implement operations practices that accommodate the accelerated rollout of mobile applications.” (Gartner Research Document: Traditional Development Practices Will Fail for Mobile Apps, Van L. Baker, Jason Wong, April 15, 2014)
“The complexities of mobile testing can impact a company’s ability to release quality products in a timely manner,” said Lorinda Brandon, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Testing and Performance Products at SmartBear. “With this new version of TestComplete, complexity is reduced, helping both novice and experienced users create robust mobile tests quickly and easily for both iOS and Android native apps. Experienced TestComplete users will notice that recording mobile tests is very similar to recording desktop and Web tests.”
Other improvements include device support for iPod touch devices with iOS ver. 6.x and 7.0–7.0.x. When checking for updates, TestComplete now checks if new patches for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome Web browsers are available. Usability improvements in the test log, informative messages and dialogs have also been added.
General Availability
TestComplete 10.3 is immediately available for download at http://www.testcomplete.com.
