Selenium lets you automate testing a web application end-to-end using a real web browser. 

However, when a test fails, diagnosing the failure can be a real challenge.  Use captured screenshots and browser HTML contents to help diagnose Selenium test failures.

According to a CNET article, the city of Bozeman, Montana "has rescinded its long-standing policy that job applicants provide user names and passwords to social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace." Which, of course, begs the question, "WHAT?"

People tend to view brand names they’re familiar with more favorably than brand names they’re not, and that finding could be important for you and your work.

Choice is good.  Except when it cripples our ability to make decisions.

We might be a little spoiled by the no-holds-barred (or, very few holds barred) aspect of the Internet. Almost from day one, we've used it for all sorts of things--both good and bad. But in China, with its enormous population and a government that seemingly will stop at nothing to keep a lockdown on Internet access, users are finding the Internet doesn't always look like what the rest of the world sees.

Some leaders in the testing industry continue to maintain that test teams are “gatekeepers”, the watchguards for quality. This makes me sad. I’ve spent many years now in development organizations where everyone--programmers, architects, DBAs, system administrators, analysts, customers as well as testers--takes responsibility for quality. These teams have delivered software whose quality is many levels of magnitude beyond teams where the testers were the quality gatekeepers.

In May, security companies rallied against Apple because of a security hole that was first brought to light last year, but which--as of last month--had not been addressed. When the Java vulnerability went unfixed in the Mac OS X 10.5.7 update, those security companies recommended that Apple users "disable Java applets in their Web browsers and ... disable the 'Open safe files after downloading' preference in Safari."

There are a wealth of open source and commercial tools available to help us build software.  However, sometimes we get stuck using tools in ways that are not optimal for our project.  In these cases, investing some time to make the tools work for us can make substantial improvements in productivity.

Do you ever do things the same old way because that’s how you learned to do them — even when there is a simpler or more efficient way? In his ultra-fascinating book, Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph Hallinan describes how easily this can happen.

Being thanked feels good. I was reminded of this a few days ago. I had sent a donation to a non-profit organization. To my surprise....