Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Ian Holdsworth — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:20:25 GMT

Shubhra I See many of these points have been resolved in Update 1

Thanks

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Peter Harlid — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 04:19:10 GMT

I'll post this update for anyone still hanging around here:

blogs.msdn.com/.../introducing-cross-browser-testing-with-coded-ui-tests.aspx

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Peter Harlid — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:26:34 GMT

And still the question remains why in gods name you chose to flip the BrowserWindow.CloseOnPlaybackCleanup to true by default when it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to change this behavior? Why? Closing the browser between runs is the easiest thing on the planet, why did you feel the need to totally wreck this? Can you answer that?

Vague references to flip this flag to false can be found here and there but the framework totally ignores this! It is driving me insane that you chose to implement this but obviously didn't test it at all! Have you any idea what damage this is causing?

The only way I found to get the framework to recognize this flag is to create a new browser window and manipulate the flag but unfortunately this DECOUPLES the browser from everything so the next test in line fails because it cannot find any controls or anything! Is there any sane or rational reason for this? Why is the framework ignoring the flag and WHY DID YOU CHANGE THE DEFAULT?

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

GLimbaugh — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:19:48 GMT

wow your forum is even flakey as it won't post my last comments and I'm not entering them again. IT doesn't matter though as you guys wont get anything done for years on this and by then this tool will be dead

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

GLimbaugh — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:17:16 GMT

@ Shubhra

Please define this term you talk about many times "soon". I'm unfamilar with it when it comes to MS. You know these and many other features have been missing for YEARS yet you continue to push real features to the bottom of the stack and for some unknown reason a redesign of an inteface was pushed to the top (i'm assuming you had to do this to fit with the new interface for the developers IDE).

Also if you read the coded UI forum you'll see MANY are having problems with your "silent repair" that is causing them to not be able to run tests and once they are in 2012 format. They don't seem to be able to go back to 2010. I am usually one of the guys that likes to install the new stuff but from what I've read I'm not upgrading until I see a reason and your feature regression is certainly no reason!

We also really need ONE spot to post issues related to Coded UI's. This shell game of post in this forum... no wait post in this forum... no wait post in this forum... Is yet another way to side step the real issue that your tool lacks many many features that no matter what you claim will be put off further and eventually people will quit complaining about it because they will stop using it.

When these tools came out with the 2010 release all i heard from MS was BS about how testers have been treated as second class citizens and this tool blah blah blah. I've quit hearing this speach since the 2012 beta as we know we are treated that way and you guys providing us with 3rd rate tools doesn't help much with that.

The features I listed were those that are MISSING or HAVE NOT improved at all since these tools went into beta back in 08 (yes 4 years). This list did not include the features you lack when comparing these tools to the industry leaders which is huge list and getting longer everyday since you cotinue to remove features. This tool clearly isn't ready to be released but you had RTM since the VS tool was going. Once again proving our 2nd class status.

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Shubhra Maji MSFT — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 09:52:04 GMT

There are a few dissatisfaction points that have been raised on this blog. Let me take them one by one.

1. Lack of Data Wizard - Coded UI Test used to derive the data Wizard functionality from unit testing framework which has changed this to a data row model that does not require a wizard any longer. Coded UI team has added an item on the backlog to come up with a replacement of this currently absent feature. You will hear from us soon

2. Test Toolbar went missing - The test toolbar has been replaced with the all new Test Explorer. You can perform much of the work of finding, organizing and running tests from the Test Explorer toolbar. Refer to msdn.microsoft.com/.../hh270865.aspx

3. "Repair 2010 projects" - Not quite sure why this is a source of concern. Test Projects containing coded UI tests that were created in Visual Studio 2010 SP1 are silently repaired when opened in Visual Studio 2012. msdn.microsoft.com/.../hh506981(v=vs.110).aspx That means, users do not have to worry about repairing old projects. Can you please let us know in case you have faced issues with 2010 projects? You can raise a Connect bug at https://connect.microsoft.com/ for quicker turnaround

4. Feedback on UIMapToolbox - We would consider your feedback and try to improve on the UIMap Maintainability as part of product fixes. Please feel free to post your comments on the discussion tab of the codeplex project so that the project owners can get your feedback uimaptoolbox.codeplex.com/discussions

5. Removed support for Firefox - Support for Chrome and Firefox are being planned upon. You will hear soon from us. We wanted to remove support for the Firfox plugin that we no longer plan to support FF 3.6 instead we plan to add support for latest browser versions. You will hear soon from us

6. TestContextInstance.WriteLine() ends up on the same row - This has been identified as a bug in the Unit Test framework. You will soon get a fix to this bug as part of VS Update

7. Maintaining UIMaps - We are planning to address the following gaps as part of future updates to VS. Please help us validate the items:

- Rename controls in UIMap

- Move controls from one hierarchy to another in UIMap

- Merge two controls in UIMap to remove duplicates

Above all, we'd like to tell you that few of the dissatisfaction with Coded UI Tests might be due to changes in VS Layout or the test automation engine. Also, we have prioritized platform support over experience improvements for VS 2012 release. We plan to fill the experience gaps soon as part of updates.

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Peter Harlid — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:11:23 GMT

Having recently switched over to VS2012 RC I'm appalled to learn that you actually *removed* support for Firefox. Seriously, what were you thinking? So after a solid year of people screaming for a more diverse browser support you restrict it even further?

And how can you have managed to mess up a basic thing such as TestContextInstance.WriteLine()? Now every debug line ends up on the same row making it impossible to debug using this! Why?! Why is basic functionality broken? In a testing tool! The irony!

And why did you decide to flip the CloseOnPlaybackCleanup flag to be true by default? Why would you have us scrambling to find a fix for this "bug" when all we had to do before was to script a simple Close() method which took less than a minute? What is going on here? Why is it more important to have rich text in the test case editor than a useful automation tool?

The good thing is the UI map editor being included by default and not bugging out like it used to do in VS2010 before the hotfix but even this is crippled as you cannot move objects around without having to edit the XML directly. And to top everything off, the new Coded UI Test project type is incompatible with VS2010 so there's no way back once you start migrating.

I had great hopes for coded UI test in VS2012. Now they seem to become great disappointments.

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

GLimbaugh — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:17:24 GMT

The only thing you can tout is that now you actually integrate with your own products and that all of the features from the service packs have been integrated…..Well except for Data Wizard, test toolbars and whatever other features you guys didn’t have time to port over to the new interface.

This tool lacks so many features that are available in other tools and yet instead of working on those you redesign the UI, workflow and “repair 2010 projects”. What was so wrong with the 2010 projects that they need repaired?

The whole UI mapping is a nightmare to manage but it has a pretty new interface. The UIMapToolbox that I see mentioned here is NOT supported and on almost every occasion it messes up the uimap file and I have to fix it manually in an xml editor. However I’m glad that it exists because there is no other way to fix the hierarchy problems that the UITestBuilder creates as it continues to record objects in “Document1” windows after the initial recordings.

This entire release SCREAMS of MS’s lack of focus on the testing tools and these tools will continue to remain the WORST in the industry! It’s really kind of sad to see as this tool will end up the way of Visual Test (a test tool developed by MS then sold to Rational because MS didn’t want anything to do with testing)

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

Greg L — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:04:42 GMT

@ Shubhra Maji and the rest of MSFT

re: Visual Studio 11 Beta - What is new in Coded UI Tests?

When do we get the Data Source Wizard Back? — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:28:17 GMT

Or are we going to force people to code their data sources from now on?