Attack of the Clones, ChatGPT Test Data, WebRiverIO BiDi and more TGNS102

[00:00:00] Joe Calantonio Have you seen the new WebDriverIO Bidi Protocol Feature in action? What can copilots' earliest users teach us about Generative AI at work and how can ChatGPT be used as a test generation tool? Find out in this episode of The Test Guild News Show for the week of November 19th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.

[00:00:22] Joe Calantonio But first, are you looking to take your automation projects to the next level? Look no further than Applitools and their Visual AI Validation testing platform. Trust me, it is a game-changer. Plus, you could try it out yourself by creating a free account. Just click on the special link down below in the first comment and see the difference for yourself.

[00:00:43] Joe Calantonio First up is an article about NightwatchJS. This was posted by David Burns, and he talked about how NightwatchJS version 3.30 has just been released and was released last week. And the update includes how parallelism works in mobile testing and it also helps remove upper limits for parallelism. This also updates a number of dependencies that NightwatchJS uses internally, especially Selenium. So you can get the latest goodness from this project, including updates to the Selenium manager. So if you're using NightwatchJS, it's highly recommended that you update to the latest version and get it as soon as possible.

[00:01:23] Joe Calantonio Also, another popular open-source framework released an update as well that you're going to get a lot of value from. And this is by Christian Bromann, who was excited to announce that WebDriverIO now harnesses the power of capabilities of the new WebDriverBidi. So what does this mean to you? Well, he points to a video that demonstrates using Google Maps as a playground to this innovative feature. Video goes over how users can click a button to change their geolocation to anywhere in the world. And in this case, the Pyramids of Giza. This is also achieved through a new emulation command in the Browser API, which allows users to set specific geolocation coordinates. Users can also alter the color scheme of the website they visit. Switching between light and dark modes. I know a lot of people ask how can I automate this feature and even custom user agents. This means the browser can mimic different devices or operating systems offering a more tailored browser experience. So this feature, this enhancement to WebDriverIO really helps testers really get the most out of it. And definitely, if you have tried WebDriverIO, I hear a lot of great things about it. Check it out and let me know your thoughts and you can find it in that first comment down below.

[00:02:32] Joe Calantonio Last week I talked about a cool project that uses AI for Playwright but it kind of stirred up a little controversy. Someone contacted me later to point me to this next article that goes over something you need to know about if you tried that other project last week. And so in this post, Todd McNeal talks about how their project was cloned and then reused without proper attribution. And this is an example of challenges I think many folks in the tech space face. And the team has ZeroStep experience. The highs and lows of launching this new project only to see it cloned based on this article within 48 hours. So ZeroStep is an AI-based library designed to enhance the Playwright test framework, which was launched a few weeks ago, which mocks a significant step towards AI assistant testing. If you have checked out ZeroStep, it is a unique combination of open-source JavaScript libraries and a proprietary backend. It uses an AI interpreter to convert plain text prompts and convert them into actual commands for browser automation and testing. And this technology, initially part of their low code testing platform reflect was spun out to reach a broader audience of developers. So what happened? Well, just a few days after the launch of ZeroStep, the team discovered a Reddit post by a user promoting a project similar to theirs. And this clone that appeared not only replicates the functionality of ZeroStep, but it also copied portions of its readme and marketing copy presenting it as an original creation. As you know, this is problematic. And even though the JavaScript library of ZeroStep is open-sourced under the MIT license allowing for legitimate forks and modifications. But Todd and the team believe that this person's intent was not to provide an alternative, but a coopt of ZeroStep project and market it as its own. This raises significant ethical questions about the boundaries of open-source licensing and the responsibilities of developers and respect for original creations. They remain committed to evolving ZeroStep and continue to invite developers to try their innovative solution for AI-based testing in Playwright. So thank you, Todd, for this innovation. And if you haven't tried it, definitely check it out in that first comment down below and really up your Playwright tests with AI-assisted testing.

[00:04:52] Joe Calantonio After watching the Test Guild News Show every Monday morning, the next thing I recommend everyone do to start the week off right is to check out Kristin Jackvony's Monday YouTube Automation series. And so Kristin posts this every Monday. This is just one example of one of the posts and she mentioned one of the great benefits of creating a YouTube channel like Monday morning automation is that whenever she forgets how to do something, she could refer back to one of her videos. So Kristin Jackvony is also one of the go-to experts for Test Automation you should follow as well. And. If you haven't checked out Monday morning automation, I'll have a link for it down below. Definitely check it out and Thank you, Kristin, for all your contributions to the automation community.

[00:05:30] Joe Calantonio One of the AI technologies I think is helping a lot of testers or automation engineers when they develop their scripts is Codepilot. So I found this article by Microsoft Codepilot that goes over some other key aspects of how it's really changing the landscape of productivity and creativity for developers and testers. They have a special report they did on how Codepilot early users could teach you about Generative AI at work and some of the key findings was productivity and efficiency. A staggering 70% of Codepilot users reported increased productivity, with 68 noting improved work quality and users experienced 29% increase in speed across tasks like searching, writing, and summarizing. Helped security were Codepilot users were 44% more accurate in cybersecurity and 26% faster in identifying cyber threats as well. And it also points to the future of work with AI.

[00:06:25] Joe Calantonio Based on that last study by Microsoft, what are some examples of how Generative AI can assist testers? Well, I found an article that highlights this key aspect for you as well. I found an example of how this is done with test generation and ChatGPT. So from my past experience as a tester, I often found creating effective test data to be a challenging task. Luckily, Wayne, who's been on the show before he's an expert in testing, recently shared a compelling success story on his blog post about leveraging AI, specifically ChatGPT for generating test data. He goes into detail about how he was developing a tool to detect duplicate failures in test automation, which required test data with similar but not identical content, and traditional methods of creating such data, as you probably know, are tedious and time-consuming. And this is where he said, AI stepped in as a really awesome way to help with this. And so Wayne turned to ChatGPT as a way to help generate the needed test data. And so what happened? While the AI output was impressively effective and efficient and perfectly met the project's requirements. And he also goes over some key highlights on why AI worked well.

[00:07:40] Joe Calantonio As a tester, you're probably always looking for ways to make your software run faster and more efficiently, especially if you deal with performance testing. I found a great resource on the four kinds of optimizations you should look at. The first one is goes over, using a better algorithm and emphasizes the points of understanding the context of which an algorithm operates. It also goes over how to use a better data structure. It also goes over how to use lower-level systems. He discusses the common approach of rewriting code in a lower-level language for performance gains. And he also goes for how accepting a good enough solution can be more practical than striving for perfection.

[00:08:20] Joe Calantonio Grafana Labs announced that Assert AI, a technology that promises to help users understand and interact with observability data was recently acquired by Grafana Labs and is set to enhance Grafana's cloud. If you don't know, Asserts AI's technology provides a contextual layer for Prometheus metrics, offering a set of alerts and dashboards for effective root cause analysis and quicker issue resolution. And this integration is inspected to significantly reduce the meantime to resolution of complex application problems.

[00:08:54] Joe Calantonio How do you navigate cybersecurity and security testing in the age of AI? Well, I didn't know this, but Owasp actually has a top 10 for large language model applications you definitely should know about and have a link to this PDF. So this resource by Owasp goes into detail on the key vulnerabilities in large language model applications.

[00:09:40] And for links of everything value we covered in this news episode, head in over to links in the first comment down below. And while you're there, make sure to check out our awesome sponsor Applitools Free account Offer and discover how to take your automation testing to the next level leveraging Visual A.I.. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed in creating end-to-end full-stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.