New Year, New Selenium: v2.17

Like many of today's browsers, the developers at Selenium have recently undertook a more regular update schedule. Since the new year, the team has released a pair of significant updates, bringing the version up to 2.17.

Recent Changes include:

• Improved native support for Firefox 9.
• Increased compatibility with FirefoxDriver and ChromeDriver environments.
• Extensive bug fixes within WebDriver and its sister platforms.

The full changelog can be accessed here.

Tech Update: Firefox 9 with faster Javascript released

Firefox 9, the newest iteration of Mozilla's popular browser, has been released. 

Along with the usual bug fixes, the biggest new feature this cycle is the inclusion of something called Type Inference, which Mozilla says improves benchmark performances in Javascript by 30 percent and can give "a large speed boost to many JS heavy websites."

The other big features include better integration into Mac OS X Lion and a Do Not Track status via Javascript. Click here for the full release notes, or head to the download page for the newest version of Firefox.

Testing the Future: Upcoming Trends for 2012

What does the near future hold for software testers? Tech Journal South has published an article espousing its predictions for testing technology and methodology in the new year.

The article lists six top picks for upcoming trends to impact the software testing market. The listed trends emphasize market progression such as soaring sales of smartphones and the proliferation of mobile application development, improvements in communications and security of test data, and procedural efficiency. Notably included are trends like Mobility Application Testing, Cross-Cloud Testing, and Crowd Sourced Testing.

The article closes with a statistic displaying solid growth in spending on testing services in the last year, as well as a forecast for steady growth in the years to come. This goes to show that while the rules may change, the game remains as healthy as ever.

You can access the full article here.