QA/TDAI/Automation Software

Software	Advantages	Disadvantages	Status
Spider	acts as test harness for various suites of tests: JS, DOM, top site Developer (Bob Clary) on staff		In use on QA test farm.
Selenium		Designed for web application testing, not end-to-end browser testing.	Under investigation
Eggplant	Cross-plaform (uses VNC)	Bitmap-based testing is inherently fragile.	Coop is working with Eggplant on the test farm to generate some proof-of-concept tests.
TestGen4Web		Designed for web application testing, not end-to-end browser testing.	Under investigation
dogtail	Python-based: would be easy to extend	Reliant on accessibility hooks. still very alpha	Under investigation (bc)
LDTP	someone in China is already working to automate testing of Firefox (1.0.6)	Requires Gnome Reliant on accessibility hooks.	Under investigation (coop)
Tomato			Under investigation (coop)
Grubzilla	promises automated and "hidden" testcase generation	Reliant on expert domain knowledge (hard to get) to seed testcase generation. No existing examples (that are accessible at least)	Waiting on feedback from Edjard and/or Monica. We tasked them to provide some proof-of-concept testcases for Software Update and Preferences.
Tracer	architecture is interesting	Captures a lot of information that we don't really care about.	Possibly reuse this design pattern in the future, but the tool itself is of limited use.
WATIR	Used by many in the testing community Designed for use in testing	Drives IE, not FF Designed for testing web app, not browser	davel to investigate
SAMIE	Designed for use in testing	Drives IE, not FF Very little recent activity	davel to investigate

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