Manual vs. automated web testing
Before testing it is important to decide whether to perform manual or automated web testing. Due to the constant increase in the complexity of web applications, manual contrary to automated web testing can - if at all - only be carried out with a lot of time and human resources involved. Modern web applications are characterized by a multitude of elements and possible interactions within the GUI which all have to be considered during testing.
Besides the possibility of reducing the testing effort, there is another reason to choose automated web testing: Especially extensive GUIs with lots of elements can push the testers to their limits when tested manually. Entering the same or similar data in hundreds of input masks for example is not an intellectual challenge but requires full concentration and can lead to a decreasing motivation and inattentiveness.
figure 1 when to implement test automation of web based applications
That is why it is not surprising that enterprises, which still perform manual instead of automated web testing, do in practice only test partially or in the worst case not at all. Employing a test tool can help in this situation and provides the following benefits:
- automated web testing permits to execute recorded test scripts repeatedly without additional effort (e.g. for regression testing)
- depending on the test tool automated web testing permits to modify test scripts with little effort and reuse them in case the system under test changes
- automated web testing supports data driven testing (see also Data driven web application testing) and avoids that trivial work sequences are constantly being repeated while at the same time reducing the necessary testing effort
Despite the advantages of automated web testing the majority of web applications is still being tested manually. The reasons for this are the particularities of modern web applications: In many situations automated web testing fails because of dynamic content or a dynamic GUI (see also Dynamic and static website testing), which is common for Ajax, or because of the high maintenance effort which is a result of the constant need for adjustment of the test scripts in case of layout changes or when using different browser/platform combinations.
That is why for automated web testing web2test takes a browser- and platform independent approach and solves the problem of dynamic GUIs via a real user simulation and an implementation of different algorithms for an intelligent recognition of GUI components. Thanks to this features web2test can be used for different areas of web testing (see also Positioning of web2test in the overall area of web testing).
The “Manual vs. automated web testing” article in German:
