Wednesday, February 27, 2013

TESTHEAD Giveaway: WIN a FREE Selenium Book!!!


And now for something "Completely Different"... and yet, not.

For those who have been following this blog for the past month, I've been working through "Selenium 2 Testing Tools" and doing a long form review of the exercises and materials. I also, last month, did a review of another book, "Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook", which is also available from the publisher of Selenium 2 Testing Tools, i.e. Packt Publishing in Birmingham, UK.

So why am I mentioning this? Because Packt Publishing is partnering with TESTHEAD to give away three FREE copies of the Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook!

OK, do I have your attention :)?

Here's some of the details about "Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook" from the Packt Publishing site:


  • Learn to leverage the power of Selenium WebDriver with simple examples that illustrate real world problems and their workarounds.
  • Each sample demonstrates key concepts allowing you to advance your knowledge of Selenium WebDriver in a practical and incremental way.
  • Explains testing of mobile web applications with Selenium Drivers for platforms such as iOS and Android
  • Uses a variety of examples and languages such as Java, Ruby and C#.

Read more about this book and download a free Sample Chapter

How to Enter

All you need to do is head on over to the book page (Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook), look through the product description of the book, and drop a line via the comments below this post to let us know what interests you the most about the book. It’s that simple.

Winners from the U.S. and Europe can either choose a physical copy of the book or the eBook. Users from other locales are limited to the eBook only.

Deadline

The contest will close on March 10, 2013. Winners will be contacted by email, so be sure to use your real email address when you comment (you can, of course write it as my (dot) name (at) emailProvider (dot) com). The winners will be chosen by a random number generator, and I'll only count people once, so no leaving a bunch of comments to boost your chances.

Please feel free to share this post with any and all who want to participate.

24 comments:

Phil Kirkham said...

All the book sounds good and is on my Wish List so cant turn down the chance to get a copy for free...

The data driven testing part sounds of interest, would be good to do some exploratory testing data stylee
- and reading how it can be used with mobile also sounds of real interest

Unknown said...

I'm not sure how extensive the chapter on locating elements is but I've run into a lot of issues finding xpaths for pages generated with random IDs and random classes. I'd sure like to see some tips and tricks to handle these pages. I mainly work with an application using GWT & GXT

David Greenlees said...

So, this bit gets my attention straight away; "...simple examples that illustrate real world problems and their workarounds" because it just sounds perfect.

I'm then worried about this; "...advance your knowledge of Selenium WebDriver..." as it implies previous knowledge may be required.

I then feel very happy to read this; "Set up iPhone/iPad & Android simulators and devices for testing your mobile web application" because it relates to my current project, and I'm sure many future projects.

My heart sinks once more with this; "If you use Selenium actively you'll find this book invaluable."

But then is lifted back up again via this; "Selenium testing tools cookbook is a great book for anyone getting started with UI-testing."

Oh damn, then this; "This book is intended for software quality assurance/testing professionals, software project managers, or software developers with prior experience in using Selenium and Java for testing web-based applications."

But hell, I think you should let me make my own mind up. ;0)

Michael Larsen said...

@David, heh heh, I said much the same thing when I reviewed it. If you are a Selenium neophyte, this would not be a good first choice.

David Burns' "Selenium 2 Testing Tools Beginner's Guide" (i.e. the one that's currently being worked in my PRACTICUM series) would be a better "first book". After reading and working through that one, then I think the Cookbook would be more useful.

David Greenlees said...

Cool mate, so if I win one of these then I'll be 'forced' to buy the one you have mentioned. ;0)

Oh yeah, I'm still in it...

Unknown said...

This is very interesting: Build data driven tests and extend Selenium API to implement custom steps and checks
along with this further down the line:
Set up iPhone/iPad & Android simulators and devices for testing your mobile web application

my email is

punkmik(at)gmail(dot)com

augsburg81 said...

Given my focus on Mobile application testing, strongly desire the section about the setting up iPhone/iPad & Android simulators as well as devices for testing our mobile web applications

Duston said...

As our company is making the switch from Coldfusion, Silverlight and Flash to HTML5 for desktop and mobil comsumption. This book looks like it might be a good fit where we are going.

Duston said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David O'Dowd said...

I'm working through Dave Burn's Selenium 2 book and reading your Practicum covering each chapter of the book. I believe this book would be a good next step once I have completed Dave's book. Specifically I believe moving in the direction of "Learn to integrate and use ATDD/BDD tools such as JBehave, SpecFlow, and FitNesses with Selenium WebDriver" will be a useful next step.

DiscoveredTester said...

I've been working with selenium since 2009, and Selenium 2 WebDriver since at least 2011. I've learned how to get a lot of it, but recently there have been some areas that I've found that I've not had a chance to dig into and learn about. The mobile RemoteWebDriver clients, being one, the idea of a PageFactory (which I've not been using, but have wondered how it could in principle be used) Make this book a good step up I think for an experienced SDT, who has maybe some selenium knowledge, but wants to expand upon it.

Mac W said...

It´s really tough to say wich chapter is best. I´ll go with chapter 11, the BDD aspect (jbehave).
mobile testing and data-driven-testing would be the next...

Riad said...

It's a good book! my next project will be a test automation of web application (not decided if to use QTP or Selenium).
I try my chance to have a free copy ;)

Angie Burns said...

The whole book interests me. I would love a free copy. But the section that says 'Set up iPhone/iPad & Android simulators and devices for testing your mobile web application' is something we need currently in our office.

Carl said...

There are many ways to leverage Selenium. I would like to learn more about how this book addresses the making of spaghetti code or not!

Adam said...

A copy of the book would be very much appreciated! :)

I love the sound of the section to set up iPhone/iPad & Android simulators.

Also Selenium Grid sounds interesting as anything that allows faster or parallel running of tests is a welcome addition especially if it reduces test execution time.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

as a perf engineer and using LR tool which is not free :( I interested in the Chapter 8: Client-side Performance Testing to learn new things and use that in my projects.
Also the other chapters to learn more about selenium.

thanks!!

Unknown said...

Awesome! I'm especially excited to learn more about mobile browser testing. Also, I had no idea you could record videos of your tests. I would consider myself quite familiar with Selenium WebDriver, but I can tell I'd learn loads from this book. Thanks for creating it!

Anonymous said...

Looks like a interesting book. Chapter 7 and 8 is what I am interested in. Best regards from Czech Repaublic... :-)
( netemail(at)seznam(dot)cz )

spizik said...

The most interesting part of book (for me) is the chapter 7. I like the book.

Oliver V. said...

I think most interesting part for me would be chapter 8: Client-side performance testing.

Wade Wachs said...

I just started on a new team that has some work started in WebDriver (well, Watir actually, but close enough) and the concepts put forth in this book would be fantastic as examples of flows around different problems, without giving anyone the abililty to copy/paste without really understanding what they are doing, which I really like.

Data driven tests, testing on mobile platforms,a nd ATDD are the topics I would most like to dig into for my personal reading, but would also share the book with the team and I'm sure they would all have their own aspects they would dig into as well.

Should I win, I think you know how to find me Michael.

Smita Mishra said...

Having followed your blog for sometime has got me interested into Selenium.
But what interested me most about the book is - the part where we can capture screenshots and videos of test runs - so important for performing Validation in Healthcare sector. This will save tremendous effort for Lifesciences and healthcare testers, if these dont need extra time and effort.
Also interesting is the part where we may learn to use Selenium to run scripts on multiple borwsers and in parallel. Learning to use Selenium for test automation of mobile apps on mobile simulators / devices will be good to learn.