Selnium On Rails- by Eric Smith

Eric Smith the current maintainer of Selenium On Rails delivered a presentation on it at Scotland on Rails.
I found it pretty informative and loved it's integration with rails. As a selenium RC user I like to have more control over the entire configuration but its not the easiest thing to do with RC.

On the other hand if you are using Rails, Selenium on Rails is the easiest way to have Automated Acceptance tests.

Check out the video (this and rest of the videos of Scotland On Rails are hosted by engine yard).

Having fun with geany:

Its my tester's instinct which enforce me to try out all those different things (most of them are Open Source), it ranges from ruby/rails, groovy/grails, Flex, Air to Editors/IDEs like Netbeans, pimped Gedit .

In trying out all those different things I came across geany A wonderful lightweight IDE/Code Editor.

This is looking really good.

It has Third-Party packages, Few Extras and lots of plugins (svn checkout http://geany-plugins.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/geany-plugins/trunk/ geany-plugins-trunk) build them from source and have fun.

Gearing Up Windows (to make it usable)

At my workplace I am using Windows Box. I have been using windows since Windows 3.1.x when we use to boot with DOS and then run it to get the GUI. Windows was never this difficult to adjust :( for me.

I have never use windows for my work, I mean I start my career on a Linux box and I just loved it. Customize it the way you like, you always have alternatives for every thing, the community is absolutely wonderful and all of it is open source, Linux is just great specially when you really like to play with software ohh forgot this blog is not about Linux ;).

Due to some environmental constraint I have to use windows, (I have FC 8 as the other booting OS and CentOS in a VM) I was having real hard time on adjusting to windows so I start gearing it up.

I am just listing tools I have install to make windows usable (For me of course):

yod'm 3d: Just can't work without multiple desktop, unfortunately its no longer free-ware, 1.4 is the last free version and its hosted by KLT. My personal experience with Yod'm have been very good, it's a portable application i.e. you don't need to install it and it works straight away.


TrayIt!: Yeah I don't like many application at my Taskbar, I have seen people using 3 even 4 rows taskbar :-0, come on guys use multiple desktop with Tray IT! .
Application which are likely to be accessed from multiple desktops (Your development IDE for instance) should be in system tray, application which just runs in the background (Like real player) should never appear in the taskbar. Tray IT! can do all this (and much more) for you and It is absolutely free.


clipX: Clipboard, yes that's it I just need a good clipboard application and clipX is just great, just press the hotkey and select what to pate.

MoRUN.net Sticker Lite: Instead of using notepad and multiple files to log or temporarily hold things I use sticky notes, again they don't take your taskbar space, you can access them with hotkeys and you don't save as they get saved automatically, MoRUN.net Sticker Lite will do all this fro free.

launchy: Do I really need to say anything? What people still click on start button, click on there desktop icons and use default file manager, with Launchy you just use Hotkeys.

ExplorerXP: I need a tabbed interface File Manager, Its absolutely mandatory I just can't work without a Multi Tab file manager. ExplorerXP Is one such good freeware (for non - commercial use) file manger.

QTTabBar: Multi Tab file manager is so mandatory for me that I have installed two of them, Even if by chance the default file manager is open I can get tabs with QTTabBar. Its an Add-In that gives Tab Browsing Feature to your Explorer. Folder grouping, histories, etc and I love it :). There is just one prerequisite for windowsXP which is Net Framework 2.0 or later should be installed on your system.
My email client is Thunderbird with quite a few addons (reminderfox, Provider for Google Calendar, Lightning, MinimizeToTray, Minimize To Tray Enhancer, Display Mail User Agent to name a few ).

If you are wondering why don't I have screen shoots and all that, I am writing this on Ubuntu 8.10 and I am @ home.

Evaluating Continuous Integration: Itself

I am not writing about how to evaluate a CI Server, if one needs to evaluate them the best resource I can suggest is CI Feature Matrix just list out your requirements before going to this page, and see which one is the best fit for you. Just for the idea of current state of CIS see What Continuous Integration Server are you using in 2008?.

Evaluating CI Server is not the important part: Once we have decided that we will have a CI server in-place, personally I don't think evaluating the CI server is the important part , I have played with quite a few continues integration servers (just to name a few: cruise control, continum, luntbuild, Hudson and Bamboo), while playing with them I realize that every single one of them dose the same basic thing really well. All of them will check out source from a Source Control Management system, will build the code in one or another way and will run/publish results of your tests. ITs what you want to do with the CI server.

The Important Part, Evaluating Continuous Integration: Yeah we need to Evaluate Continuous Integration Itself. Continuous Integration is not just an activity or state but a Philosophy, a culture which is foster by agile methodology, to integrate and test the code more frequently to find out bugs when it’s less expensive to fix them. Are you and your team comfortable with it? Have you spend enough time with the team to let them know the importance and advantages of it? have you trained them how will they carry out there work from now onwards? are you keeping an eye on the state of builds? are people writing Unit Tests at the very first place? and so on.. make your self comfortable with Continuous Integration.

Open Source To rescue: Don't invest on any commercial tool straight away just because you think it will be cool, its not a tool you are looking for its the process. Use open source tools to introduce CI, to prepare your team for CI (you might like the open source alternatives so much that you might stick to them) make CI a part of development cycle and "Evaluate CI for your team and your team for CI". This will help you to refine requirements but more importantly you will know who needs the Improvement they way CI is being conducted or your team. This Evaluating CI can be done in two possible ways: 1. By using complete open source solution: (e.g Hudson with code analysis tools like cobertura, PMD and FindBugs) 2. By using Evolutionary copy of a commercial CI Server: (e.g Bamboo with code analysis tools like clover/ cobertura, PMD and FindBugs)

What are your waiting for Start Evaluating...

Need to know about Continuous Integration go to Martin Fowler Continuous Integration or buy Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk (Addison-Wesley Signature Series)