Appium Inspector, Test Tool Vulnerabilities & More TGNS28

Hey, have you seen the new Appium Inspector? Do you like barbecue and performance testing? And are you using projects like Cucumber, Webdriver, IO comma Cypress and do you know what security vulnerabilities they all might have in common that put you at risk? Find out the answers to these and all other end to end full pipeline DevOps automation testing, performance testing and security testing in this episode of the Test Guild News show for the week of January 9th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this before we get into it, this episode of the Test Skill new show is sponsored by the awesome folks at applitools. Applitools is a next generation test automation platform which is powered by visual AI. So it helps you increase quality, accelerate delivery and reduce costs. What I think is the world's most intelligent test automation platform. But don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself. Create a free account now by clicking on a link in the comments down below. And while there, why not like leave a comment and subscribe to get alerted and every time I release a new episode. First up, Automation News so the first thing I was alerted to this week was that LambdaTest just launched a Hypertest feature that lets you run end to end Selenium test faster. So according to this press release, hypertest actually unifies all the components of a Selenium grid type of implementation into a single execution environment. That eliminates the need for network hops, which in turn cuts down on the test execution time. So I never used it myself, but if this is something that sounds interesting to you, always check it out in the link down below. So a recent article that also caught my attention this week was how to run Cypress Test in Docker on Concourse CI. So if you don't know, Concourse is a open source tool for automating your software delivery pipelines. It's similar to GitLab, which uses declarative pipelines using YAML files. But the difference is Concourse is stateless and this article goes over some key benefits of why that matters. It just seems like a really nice good step by step guide on how to getting started using Concourse and adding Cypress to your CI pipelines. So if you're using Cypress, if you're using Concourse, if you never use both together, definitely a good must read. I actually just saw an article that mentioned that Python actually nabs Programming Language of the Year honors and for the second year in the row there's an index that actually tracks the popularity of languages and Python has been identified as the most popular programming language. I actually mentioned Python in my latest updated post on the top automation testing trends and predictions for 2022 that identified Python as being a critical skill for testers going into the new year. And not only that, I correlated between popular programming languages and development in general and how it actually works for testers or if you're a tester, if that actually applies to testing jobs. So I took the top 20 job openings I could find in testing software automation engineers, I put them all into a Word cloud and as you can see Python is actually one of the skills that popped up as one of the top skills that these type of positions are looking for for a test automation engineer. So if you don't know it already, I definitely highly recommend getting more familiar with Python for sure to help you with your career. And a lot of new developments in test automation are coming out around Python. So definitely something to know and be aware of. And definitely check out all my other predictions on the top testing trends you need to know for 2022 in the links down in the first comment below. So another trend I mentioned was the increase in mobile testing. So this next article is how Appium just released Appium Inspector, which is a standalone application that you should definitely should know about if you're doing anything to do with Appium. And some cool features of Appium Inspector is you can easily define Appium server connection details and set up capabilities, you could save server details and capabilities for future sessions, you can connect to a variety of cloud Appium platforms, you can select elements by clicking on them in a screenshot and a bunch of other cool things. So definitely if you're an Appium automation engineer, I think it's a must have or a must check out for sure. Also Jonathan Lips, who is the main contributor to Appium recently posted that they're actually looking for people to help them maintain Appium Inspector and a bunch of other features and you can get paid for it as well. So not only will you be contributing to the community and learning, you also will get some will get paid for your efforts also. So definitely check that out and I have a link for that also in the links in the first comment down below. So one thing I like about Cypress is over the past year or so I've been seeing a lot of people really utilize it for all kinds of end to end testing. I know Marie Drake has used it to help her with front end performance testing. I've seen other folks use it to help them with accessibility testing. I think Marie Drake also has a demo on that as well. But another one that I never knew about until recently when I started on LinkedIn was something called Monkey Test. And I've known about Monkey Testing, but I didn't know that you can actually use it with something called Gremlin JS and Cypress IO if you do any sort of end to end testing and using Cypress. Just another reason why I think Cypress is really gaining popularity. And this from Gary Parker who's written a short article on Monkey Testing and how you can use it using Gremlin js. And it gives some good reasons why you should do this. How to get started, how to integrate with Cypress. So this definitely something I'm going to check out and if it interests me, I figure, hey, it might interest you as well. So definitely check it out also. Next up, Performance and reliability news. First thing, Scott Moore has just announced his Perf Tour Season 2. If you don't know anything about the Perf Tour and you like barbecue especially, you definitely need to check this out and how Scott got this official press release. I need to ask him, but press release announced that the 2022 PERF tour is coming up. Goes over the topics that he'll cover. And another reason why I highly recommend you check it out is I'm actually going to be featured as one of the speakers that he visited in Season two and in the very first episode. So you definitely check out how socially awkward I really am in the real world, as Scott probably can tell you. But yeah, we had a great time, great discussion. I always get freaked out watching myself on camera when I'm not in charge of editing. But hey, it is what it is. So hopefully you get some value out of it. And definitely give Scott more a follow and definitely check out all his Perf Tour videos coming out for Season two. So thank you Scott for all you do for the performance community. So another article that caught my attention that I never really thought about was the performance comparisons between selenium 3 and selenium 4. Does it matter? Is it a difference? How does it help you as an automation engineer? So this article goes over the architectural upgrades to selenium 4. What's new in selenium 4? And then they did some comparisons against selenium 3 and selenium 4 to see which one performed the best with a conclusion. So if you want to know which one did the best, definitely check that out in the link down below. Next up, Security news. All right, so not often you see Security News that actually relates directly to automation testing tools as well, but I just saw this LinkedIn post right before I recorded this video this morning from Jan on how malicious code introduced in colors JS also affects projects like Cucumber, WebDriver, IO Commerce, Cypress and some others, so definitely to be aware of. So Jan recommends If you're using JavaScript or Node, how to pin your dependencies on colors to 1.40 to avoid this. He also is the main contributor to Serenity JS and he's upgraded his fix for this. I believe you don't have to worry about it, but definitely check this out and you can actually learn more about what this vulnerability is caused by in Jan's post. Also so some craziness going on in security the past few weeks, but this is definitely something that can impact you especially especially if you have anything to do with automation testing using any of these tools. It looks like a lot of them are taking care of it, but just something to be aware of that all these open source projects consume other libraries and some of these libraries could be vulnerabilities as well. Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with automation tools. It's any type of software out there nowadays that you need to be aware of, especially when it comes to security. As a tester so I found this article on the top mobile application security risk breaches for 2021 that you definitely should check out and the outlook goes over that. With over 200 billion downloads in 2020, mobile applications present a complex attack surface in that one in four companies surveyed suffered a mobile or Internet of Things data breach and this goes over some of the top breaches for 2021. Really an eye opener and just something to educate yourself with and become more familiar with I think is really critical as we head into the new year. So definitely check that out as well in the link to down below. And one vulnerability you probably heard a lot about is log 4J Snyk has actually upped their test limits on their free plan that I think is going to help you. So this means that any developer, no matter the company or the project, can now use the Snyk open source to find and fix log4shell because it's now doubled the number of free tests it allows. So just great resource to know about. So definitely once again check it out for links of everything of value we covered in this video news episode. Head on over to the links in the first comment down below. And while you're there make sure to check out our awesome sponsor applitools if you've never used them. This is a great time to get on board in 2022 to learn how visual validation could take your testing to a whole nother level using a free account that they offer leveraging visual AI. So definitely check that out by creating a free account now in that link down below. It really helps the show as well. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild new show. I'm Joe and my mission is help you succeed in creating end to end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test Hareton and keep the good Cheers.