Are you using TFS 2012? 

Are you using or adopting Scrum?

Then get the most out of your tools and your process by attending a 2-day Certified ScrumMaster course with a free one day Scrum with TFS course.

The CSM course is taught by our Certified Scrum Trainer, Colin Bird, and I will be helping out with the optional, free third day which will give you hands on experience with TFS 2012, putting into practice what you have learned in the first 2 days.

The course will be held on Microsoft Campus in Reading on the 21st May – 23rd May

More details available here or you can register here.

If you hurry you can still get the discounted early bird price!

Cheers,

Richard

I was putting together a demo of cross browser Coded UI testing with Visual Studio 2012 and ran into a minor problem.  Hopefully this post will save you some time.

I grabbed the very helpful Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts from Brian Keller and installed Chrome, FireFox and the Selenium components for Coded UI Cross Browser Testing from the Visual Studio Gallery. 

After that, one line of code can make your Coded UI tests run on a different browser.  For example, just stick this line at the beginning of your test method:

BrowserWindow. CurrentBrowser = “chrome”;

More details here: Using Different Web Browsers with Coded UI Tests

The problem I ran into was that the Selenium Components installer failed, which seems to be a reasonably common issue due to access permissions, but helpfully Microsoft provide the simple steps to manually install what is needed.

1. Download chrome driver from:

http://chromedriver.googlecode.com/files/chromedriver_win_26.0.1383.0.zip

2. Download selenium dot net bindings from:

http://selenium.googlecode.com/files/selenium-dotnet-2.29.1.zip

3. Right click on the downloaded zip files.

4. Select "properties".

5. Under "General" tab, click on the "Unblock" button.

6. Now unzip both the files and copy the contents to the following path (for the selenium-dotnet 2.29.1 binaries, copy the contents of net40 folder):

"%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\VSTT\Cross Browser Selenium Components" (for 32 bit machines)

"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Common Files\microsoft shared\VSTT\Cross Browser Selenium Components" (for 64 bit machines)

On the 64 bit VM I unzipped the contents of the zip files into the “Cross Browser Selenium Components” folder and started my test but received the following error:

Test Method CodedUITestProject1.CodedUITest1.CodedUITestMethod1 threw exception:

Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Extension.UITestException:

The playback engine could not find the selenium binaries required to run cross browser coded ui tests.  This may be because the Selenium .Net bindings and the Selenium Chrome driver are not installed or an older version of the Selenium Components Installer was used.  For more information about installing the binaries, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=267598

The important line in the manual installation instructions that I’d failed to follow was:

for the selenium-dotnet 2.29.1 binaries, copy the contents of net40 folder

So, to resolve the problem, simply copy the contents of the “net40” sub-folder into the “Cross Browser Selenium Components” parent folder

Happy testing.

Cheers,

Richard

Yesterday I presented at Microsoft Tech.Days Online 2013.  It was a slightly odd experience presenting in an almost empty auditorium to some cameras and a bunch of AV guys.

*Picture shamelessly borrowed from fellow presenter Colin Beales

If you attended the sessions, hopefully you enjoyed it and if you have any questions then please do get in touch.  The event continues today with some great content for IT Pros.

Cheers,

Richard

It’s my pleasure to be part of Microsoft UK Tech Days Online 2013 which is happening next Wednesday (24th April 2013).  It’s shaping up to be an excellent 3-day online event for both developers an IT Professionals with some really interesting areas being covered.  Day One is aimed at the development community with sessions on targeting Windows 8 and Windows Azure alongside Team Foundation Server and Application Lifecycle Management.  The day starts at 09:20 BST 

I am hosting two of the sessions and I’ll be around to answer questions live on the day.

12:00  Being Agile with Team Foundation Server 2012

Team Foundation Server 2012 introduced a number of excellent features and capabilities to help enable your agile team to plan, manage and track their work. This session will introduce the tools and provide details on how to get the best out of them.

15:40  Testing enhancements in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and Update 2

Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the newly released Update 2 have introduced some exciting new features and functionality to the core testing tools.  This session will demonstrate the new web based Test Case Management, cross browser support for Coded UI Testing and Microsoft Test Manager improvements.

You can register for this event here and it’s worth doing even if you can’t make it on the day as we’ll follow up with resources and recordings of the sessions.

Cheers,

Richard

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