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.

Chrome 16 released with sync, user profile features

Google pushed the last major update of the year to Chrome, now version 16, to users. Aside from a number of bug fixes, the new version of Chrome also comes with a couple related new features: syncing across platforms and multiple user accounts within the browser.

The Google Chrome blog explains the sync feature as allowing you to save bookmarks, apps, extensions, history and other settings to your Google account and then sync it back down to other devices with Chrome. To facilitate this, they've also added a feature allowing you to sign in to your Google account right in Chrome. This will also automatically sign you into anything linked to your Google account.

This leads us to the other new feature: adding user accounts within the browser. The idea here is to keep each user's preferences separate and to easily switch between synced profiles. The blog entry makes a note of the fact that this is a convenience feature and not a security feature.

The Google Chrome blog explains more about both features and even has a nifty video. If you want to see the list of bug fixes, head over to the Google Chrome Releases Blog.

Opera browser updated to 11.60

Opera 11.60 has been released by Opera Software for Windows, OS X and Unix. The major changes include a new, faster engine, an improved address bar and a major update to the browser's integrated mail client.

The new engine should offer "improved website compatibility, faster page loading, and a higher level of overall stability when browsing," while the new address bar features improved prediction and an ability to quickly bookmark pages using a star in the address bar. The mail clients update includes "a cleaner layout, message grouping, a more intuitive view in your inbox and easier navigation."

Check out the updated Opera at their download page, or hit the jump for the full, long list of changes.

ARM releases Development Studio 5 for Android NDK

ARM has released DS-5, a new version of it's Development Studio suite of Eclipse-based tools. The suite is meant to aid in the development of native code for the ARM architecture, currently the most widespread processors in the mobile field, using the Android NDK, which was recently release by Google in it's seventh revision.

Along with the usual bug fixes, ARM has included new debugging based enhancements, including, "automated connection to Android targets for NDK-generated native code, Instruction trace support for Cortex-A7 processors, CADI support to permit debugger connection external simulation models and the ability to capture instruction trace for selected segments of code." However, as Ars Technica points out, now may not be the best time to heavily invest in coding hardware specific apps.

The other major changes include:

• Support for Ubuntu Desktop Edition 10.04 32-bit hosts
• ARM Compiler
  • Support for Cortex^™-A7
• Streamline
  • Support for annotations from kernel space
  • Sub-millisecond resolution for capture events, such as annotations and context switches
  • Command line interface can now export timeline data
  • Points of interest on the timeline charts can be pinned for easier result comparison
• Configuration Database:
  • Pre-configured debug support for these additional platforms:
    • ARM ARM1156T2F-S CoreTile, Versatile Express Cortex-A15x2 SMM
    • Atmel AT91SAM9G25 and AT91SAM9X35
    • Mindspeed Transcede 4000
    • NXP LPC3131, LPC3141 and LPC3152

For a list of the full changes, head over to the DS-5 change log.

Highlights from GTAC 2011

Videos from the 2011 Google Test Automation Conference have been made available. 2011 marks the 6th iteration of this annual gathering of some of the brightest minds in test development and theory. This video features two developers who touch on the latest and greatest open source web testing tools from Google. They address how to effectively streamline the more labor intensive and repetitive testing tasks, allowing testers greater creativity and freedom.

Primarily featured is progress with BITE (Browser Integrated Testing Environment), a testing tool integrated with the Chrome OS. One important function of BITE is the ability to record and playback the test procedure with support for outputs in JavaScript, "Plain English" translation of each action, and image capture. BITE also features a streamlined interface for making procedural updates to deal with changes such as new product builds, allowing testers to easily fix broken tests due to outdated code.

The video also discusses the development of quality bots and how to effectively harmonize bot and crowd testing.

You can view the complete collection of videos from this conference here.

Read more about BITE here.

Mozilla releases "new, faster" Firefox Beta 9

Less than a week after Firefox 8 went live, Mozilla has released Firefox Beta 9 to the Beta channel for testing. The main aim of this version of Firefox is to increase the overall speed of the browser through increasing the efficiency of JavaScript and by enabling chucking for XHR requests.

In addition to the speed increase, Firefox Beta 9 adds support for Mac OS X Lion and increased privacy settings. The additions to Mac OS X Lion support include application toolbar and icon styles, 2-finger swipe navigation and easier detection of multiple monitors. As for the privacy settings, a new option called Do Not Track has been included to instruct JavaScript that the user wishes to opt-out of behavioral tracking features.

Head over to the main Firefox Beta 9 site for the download link, available in Windows, OS X and Linux flavors.