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Comment by joncalhoun | Hacker News Reader

How different is this from https://www.rainforestqa.com/ ?

I haven't used either extensively, but they look similar in a few ways, yet different. I am curious if anyone with knowledge of the two could elaborate on the differences.

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In Usetrace you define modular tests by using your own site. Tests (or traces) are visually represented like cartoon strips. You can follow test execution from a live view in your browser. Tests are executed automatically and in parallel. An average test run completes in 10-20s from request. Error screenshots and reports can be emailed or send to your team chat e.g. HipChat.

In Rainforest you define tests by writing instructions for human testers. Reports only tell you if a test was successful or which steps succeeded / failed. It takes close to half an hour for one two step test to complete in five browsers.

Cheers, Eero CEO of Usetrace http://twitter.com/EeroHeroHeino

For me, I'm more interested in how this differs from Selenium. Is it just making this sort of testing process easier?

We've build on top of selenium. Traces are modular in a similar fashion than programming parametrized modules and they can be updated separately - Mixing the benefits of programmable tests with the easiness of record&playback.

When you can, please open source as much as you can back to the Selenium project -- especially if you fix and find bugs! :-)

It's more of a pain in the ass but I can write my own tests with Selenium in Cucumber or RSPEC or what have you, and I can use all kinds of wrappers for it(Watir, TelluriumDriver, etc). I understand the ease of just doing a "trace" graphical test instead of writing the code, but why would I pay you 90$/month for the privilege? Not only that, I can get much more granular with my RSPEC-Selenium tests. Oh yes, I can also re-use methods that encapsulate sequences of decisions like sign_up_for_website instead of having to resign up every time I make a new trace.

I can go through a sign up flow and then grab the last user with Ruby and do actual checks on it's methods and members, and then go back to browser navigation. This seems like a less free way to do fewer checks with a prettier interface.

We're currently providing a way to reuse the beginning of trace in other traces. Most traces start with logging in to the app, so you can create the login trace, and share it to all other traces. So you end up defining signing up once.

I'm surprised a GUI for selenium test creation hasn't been done sooner. It looks like you guys have done a good job, but the feature I would need to see before using this seriously is a way to get the selenium code output and fine tune it. That way most tests could be created by less technical people but if there are issues an engineer could step in and fix it.

You can add coded steps when you need advanced features. You'll have javascript in your site's context available.

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