Load Testing Blog
What is the Fastest Web Browser in 2018?
Even though interoperability has been conquered, browsers still want to compete on performance, so picking the fastest one is a reasonable question. But what does browser performance mean in a world in which many people now have 1 Gb/s network connections in their home, and a 4G LTE phone connection can go up to 173Mb/s?
How to Convert Selenium Scripts to Virtual Browser Scripts
Web Performance has discontinued direct support for Selenium/WebDriver in Load Tester. One of the limitations of load testing with Selenium/Web Driver is that it takes lots and lots of cloud machines to generate load. Virtual users, on the other hand, are very efficient, cheaply simulating up to millions of users. This blog post shows one possible option, playing back your selenium scripts directly into the Load Tester recorder where they can be edited and played back with lots of virtual users.
Install Load Tester
Download Load Tester and install it on your Windows machine if you haven’t already. Double-click on the … Continue reading »
Web Performance Tester 6.5 release
If you’ve been following the quick pace of development of our real-browser features, we know you’ll be excited about these new features:
Extract values
Data in the browser can now be extracted into a user state variable for use later in the testcase. Read more…
Organize testcase steps
The steps in real-browser testcases can now be organized into hierarchical groups for better readability and easier maintenance. Read more…
Improved selection from choice boxes
Drop-down choices now support selection by position in the list (i.e. index) and by the option value (a hidden attribute in the HTML). Continue reading »
Selecting a choice by index or value from a drop-down list in the browser
The first release of Web Performance Tester (WPT) with real browser support allow users to select items from a drop-down list (an HTML Select element) based on the text visible to a human user – just like a real user would do. There are times, however, when choosing based on the position in the list (index) or the hidden value of the selection makes a testcase more robust. This is especially true when the text descriptions of the choices may change due to variations in language, software changes, etc.
Starting with version 6.5, real-browser testcases can be configured to select by … Continue reading »
Extracting Values from the Browser
Occasionally, a testcase requires a bit of information from one page in the testcase to be used on another page, later in the testcase. In some cases, this is exactly what a real user would do (e.g. click on a link chosen based on text that appeared earlier). Other times, it is a hidden identifier that is used to choose the right element from a list later. Either way, an Extract a value step can be used to get data from the browser.
In the above example, an attribute value is extracted and stored in a user state variable named … Continue reading »
Organize Steps into Logical Groups in Real Browser testcases
With Web Performance Tester 6.5 (WPT), you can easily organize the steps in your testcases into groups to make them easier to read and maintain. You can create groups within groups with no limit on the depth. This example shows three groups – the 3rd (Type the post) is contained in the 2nd (Create post and submit). The fourth group, not shown here, includes all the steps in the testcase (i.e. the entire testcase is a group).
Increased productivity and editing on-the-fly
Create groups just like any other step – add a step and change the type to Group. Quickly create your … Continue reading »
Accessing downloaded files in real-browser testcases
Dealing with file downloads is considered by many to be problematic when developing testcases with Selenium/WebDriver. Web Performance Tester (WPT) makes this task relatively effortless when working with Chrome – when the virtual user will initiates a download (by clicking something), the file will be downloaded into a directory that exists only for the duration of that testcase. This solves one problem – running out of disk space due to files downloaded during test iterations – because when the testcase ends, the temporary folder is removed along with the downloaded files.
Some tests require validating the content of the file, so … Continue reading »
Web Performance QA Tester and Load Tester 6.4 Released
Real-browser testing can increase your productivity over other testing methods. The features added in the 6.4 release will help you work even more efficiently!
Locator Suggestions
One of the more challenging aspects of working with real-browser testcases is locating the element that you need to interact with. Starting in 6.4, a suggestion button next to every locator field will provide a variety of different locators that you can try if the default locator does not work. These suggestions also help you learn how to create locators – as you will see a wide variety of locator suggestions provided.
Read more about Continue reading »
Create verify steps on-the-fly during real-browser recording in 6.4 release
Verifying elements and text on the page is an important part of every testcase. Web Performance Tester makes this easy by adding verify steps directly from the browser while recording the testcase. The Verify option in the browsers pop-up menu provides a list of the most common verifications:
In addition to verifying the page title and URL, there are three categories of verifications supported:
For any element, you can verify:
text of the element
element exists
element is visible
element is clickable
For any field (text input, button, checkbox, etc) you can verify:
field value
field is (or not) selected
By selecting text on the page, you can verify … Continue reading »
Real browsers vs virtual browsers: which to choose for your testing?
Since version 6, Web Performance Tester has supported two different ways to simulate user behavior on a website for testing: real browsers and virtual browsers. These two methods take very different approaches to the problem and each has different advantages and disadvantages. Those are not always obvious at first glance, so I’d like to run through the key difference to help you decide.
But first, a brief description of the two approaches:
Real browsers – When using the real-browser approach, the test is defined in terms of the actions the that a human would take in the browser in order to complete … Continue reading »