Blogs|Jan 5, 2017

Running Spectron Tests in Visual Studio Team Services Build

Having end-to-end tests and running them locally can definitely be beneficial, but one of the main reasons to have them is to run them automatically during a nightly build. Getting these tests to run in Visual Studio Team Services isn’t trivial. Here’s some tips on how to get them going. Setting up build definitions When…
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Blogs|Jan 3, 2017

Unexpected Benefits of End-to-end Testing

End-to-end Testing Testing where the entire application is tested in a real-world scenario such as communicating with the database, network, hardware and other applications. The above is the general definition of what an end-to-end test is. Most of these tests are written to make sure general flows of the application that a user may take…
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Blogs|Dec 27, 2016

Get Function Keys By Default with Parallels and a MacBook Pro Touch Bar

Having purchased a 15 inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar recently, I’ve been having a good time seeing how that Touch Bar can be used. With applications that know about the Touch Bar, it is an interesting UI approach. But with many macOS applications not having full Touch Bar support, I’ll reserve full judgment until…
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Blogs|Dec 27, 2016

Top NPM Packages for Spectron Testing

Spectron is a great tool for testing your Electron applications. However, some help is needed to get the full use out of it. This post will go through all of the npm packages I’ve found useful in my Spectron testing. Jasmine Reporters The default reporter for Spectron is to just log out to the terminal.…
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Blogs|Dec 21, 2016

Introducing the Spectron Command Line Tool

After some Spectron experience there tends to be some things that can get repetitive when creating Spectron tests. I figured creating a tool to do just that would be handy to have. So I created the spectron-cli npm package. Granted, this command line tool doesn’t do all that much. Currently, it only has two commands to…
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News|Dec 14, 2016

Teach Cortana New Tricks (and Reach Her Users) With the Cortana Skills Kit

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it’s introducing a Cortana Skills Kit, allowing developers to add new capabilities to the virtual assistant. Developers using the kit will be able to turn their web services, bots created with the Microsoft bot framework, and existing Alexa skills into new skills for Cortana. Currently in private preview, the kit will…
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News|Dec 6, 2016

Non-Admin Users Can Now Create Symlinks in Windows 10

With the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft is making it easier for developers to create symlinks, virtual files that link to actual physical files located somewhere else. The change should speed development in Windows 10, making use of symlinks on the platform as seamless as it already is on Linux and OSX. As Microsoft notes in…
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News|Dec 2, 2016

AdDuplex Wants to Help You Monetize Your App

AdDuplex has launched a new ad monetization program for Windows developers, citing a lack of monetization options for apps and games on the UWP platform. The invite-only program has been operating on select apps for a few months now, Windows Central reports, and AdDuplex is now offering developers the opportunity to join through an application process.…
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News|Nov 22, 2016

Microsoft Bets Big on Quantum Computing

Microsoft has hired several of the world’s foremost quantum computing experts, doubling down on the effort to build a machine that could solve complex problems much more quickly than a digital computer. Microsoft hardware guru Todd Holdmdahl will lead a research team focused on using a unit of quantum information called a topological qubit to…
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Blogs|Nov 21, 2016

Spectron Tip: Getting Selectors From Chrome Dev Tools

If you’re using Spectron (or even Protractor) for automating your applications probably the most time consuming thing is to figure out exactly what selectors you need in order to interact with your application. Whether to click on a button or to test if the text of a dialog is what you expect, you need a…
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News|Nov 17, 2016

Yes, Microsoft Just Joined the Linux Foundation

Microsoft’s commitment to open-source reached a new high Wednesday when the company announced it’s joining the Linux Foundation. The company that once sought to build a wall around its proprietary software kingdom will now join corporations like Intel, Huawei and Samsung as high-paying Platinum Level members of the foundation, according to TechCrunch. The Linux Foundation…
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Blogs|Oct 12, 2016

Creating Page Files for Spectron Tests

Now that we’ve got Spectron working, let’s add some more to it to help with our testing. One way of doing end-to-end testing is to have a separate file that contains our page objects and any helper functions specific to that page. This will help the readability and maintainability of our tests. The latest code…
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