Automation Testing: Mobile vs. Web Applications

Mobile Applications Automation

Mobile devices are everywhere. They are in the hospitals, at warehouses, on delivery trucks and in classrooms. PDAs, smartphones, tablets and handhelds can be found in cars, airports, remote offices—These objects are constantly turned on, helping mobile workers stay connected and productive even when they are away from their computers.

But mobile devices do not simply mimic desktop environments.

They have unique uses and specialized applications that need to be purpose-built, ported to a variety of devices, and tested on all possible configurations to verify that they function correctly and remain reliable.

With so many smartphones and other devices currently on the market, how do you enable your applications to work as expected? How can you test them on all popular mobile operating systems and keep current with the new OS versions as they become available? Can you create a test set that would run through all common business transactions on a mobile device with hundreds of different sets of data to check for errors? Can you look inside the smartphone and see what the application is doing to its memory, power consumption, or response speed?

The answer to these questions lies in mobile device test automation. Only by investing in a test automation strategy and solutions can you create a comprehensive approach to mobile application quality and reliability. By implementing device-agnostic end-to-end testing solutions, we can say with confidence that our mobile applications can work on any device, with any language, any configuration, and on all popular OS. Build our test sets once and run them on every new version of the application.

By creating scripts that are easy to maintain and reuse, we can safeguard our mobile applications against failures that can cause costly business interruptions and have a negative impact on customer experience.

Mobile Applications Test Automation Solution

HP Software provides one of the most advanced automated functional and regression testing solutions that support all major software applications and environments. HP is extending its industry-leading functional testing capabilities to mobile applications “Jamo”. Jamo testing solutions use the HP QuickTest Professional (QTP) software platform and QTP’s best practices and advanced features to bring automation into the world of mobile application testing.

The solution allows for end-to-end test automation: from the originating mobile device, through the delivery infrastructure to the receiving device. It covers the entire business process from both the IT perspective (monitoring servers, routers, and other infrastructure components) and the mobile devices where messages are being sent and received.

Building Test Scripts for Mobile Applications

The Jamo mobile applications testing solution recognizes objects on a screen just like a user would see them. It captures these GUI objects into a QTP test script, making the scripts easy to navigate, enhance, and maintain. All user interactions with the device—such as sending a multimedia message or pressing the Send button—are captured and can be viewed in QTP in either a keyword or expert view. Using GUI-object recognition makes the script completely independent from the phone’s hardware configurations, processor power, screen resolution, background color, or available buttons.

It makes the scripts extremely versatile and reusable, and helps achieve more comprehensive testing of your mobile applications. The ability to regression-test applications without having to recreate the test scripts for every patch or new version creates, perhaps, one of the most notable ROI from automated testing. Manual testing procedures can seldom cover the breadth of data combinations, business process scenarios, and test runs that can be achieved through automation.

Web Application Automation

As Web applications become more popular and increasingly more complex, the need for test automation of these applications grows. Automating tests through a GUI are difficult and can be costly. The most popular methods of automating using a GUI are to use window coordinates to click items or to create and use references to window objects. The first method relies on locations of objects not changing on a page; the second usually relies on a type of proprietary object mapping format where all Web page objects must be captured and saved prior to scripting.

Another approach is to seek out and use testable interfaces that are built into Web browser applications and provide the ability to directly access the objects on the page as they appear in the Web browser.

It simply makes the web application work for us even when we are not there. This gives business owners a lot of time to do other important business transactions other than just monitoring their sites. Generating message boards and forums allow visitors to leave their comments, questions, and other concerns and get responded to without personal supervision.

Building Test Scripts for Web Application

Web application automation tools are normally easy to use and to move around. The software is crafted in the best way possible so as to deliver the best and unique website possible. All the instructions are clearly mentioned to avoid users getting confused in the process. The whole process can be done easily the form of drag and drop dynamics. We will not need to write any code to incorporate any parts; Just place the cursor on the feature which you need then drag it to where ever it is required.

The website automation tools take you through each of these vital steps in fine detail to ensure that you create an optimized, monetized cash generating website. Since the website is the reason readers are visiting your site; it is only natural that the content be the dominant feature on the page. Hence, Ads should be placed in appropriate areas of your pages where they do not detract from the main posts. Advertisements should be of reasonable size and, of course, relevant to your website. In fact, if you want increased clicks to your ad links, you first have to improve your website’s viewership by drawing visitors to your content.

Those who have not yet discovered the convenience of website automation tend to manually approve all new users without knowing that there are several program options that allow them to set up automatic user registration that immediately processes the username and password being registered without waiting for someone to approve their request.

Conclusion:

We can test mobile application by using mobile emulators.As compared to desktop browser applications , mobile apps require significantly lesser effort.Web automation technique is mostly used for customizing data for enterprise use and automating  web contents within the overall context of information technology and business .Due to this reason ,automation of the web is not likely to be considered in isolation with reference to the rest of the IT infrastructure.

We would love to hear your thoughts and experience in Automation Testing for Mobile or Desktop Apps. Feel free to share your views in the comments below !!