Medium Upgrade QF-Test 4.1 released

• Additional browsers via Selenium WebDriver, includes Firefox 44 and up, Edge and Safari and Chrome on the operating systems supported by the browsers. In addition, Selenium scripts can be executed from QF-Test and both approaches can be mixed.
• Dedicated QF-Test App for macOS with support for Swing, Java FX and Web.
• Eclipse plugin with special Run Configurations that combine starting the SUT, launching QF-Test and possibly running initial test-steps directly from Eclipse.
• Jython update to version 2.7, Groovy to version 2.4.7.
• License server mechanism with global floating instead of just across the local network.
• 64 bit browser support on all systems.
• Support for the AJAX framework Kendo UI.
• Improved synchronization for web tests.
• Support for component resolution via XPath and CSS-selectors.
• Alternative connection mechanism for Swing with improved support for  Java WebStart, applets or custom EventQueues.
• Execution timeout to  execution time for individual sequences,  test-cases, test-sets or whole batch runs.
• Capabilities to re-execute failed test-cases or sequences automatically or manually from the run-log.
• Merging run-logs.
• Generic retry, a smarter way of replay that better handles timing issues, especially components that vanish or get replaced just while QF-Test was trying to access them.
• Locating procedures or components with variable names/IDs.
• Updates to the QF-Test manual include new chapters about  keyword-driven testing and load-testing as well as a major rewrite  of important topics and more comprehensive documentation for  QF-Test's pseudo DOM API.

For a detailed list of innovations since QF-Test version 4.0.11 please see the release notes for QF-Test versions 4.1.0-rc1 through 4.1.0 in the QF-Test manual.

Changes between QF-Test version 4.1.0-rc2 and 4.1.0 are listed in the release notes in section 4 below.

You can download the latest QF-Test version and try it.

QF-Test 4.1 is mostly backwards compatible to QF-Test 4.0. However, in some cases you may need to set certain options, downgrade features or install legacy packages in order to retain compatibility. These are explained in detail in appendix B.1.2 and B.1.3 of the manual. Here is a short summary:

• Jython 2.7 requires Java 7 or higher, Groovy 2.4 requires at least Java 6.
• The new Swing connection mechanism handles even very tricky Swing  SUTs that implement their own EventQueue, especially in combination with WebStart or applets. In case of problems it can be disabled via  the option "Instrument AWT EventQueue".
• Google has completely dropped support for Java applets in Chrome. This includes the Chrome browser embedded by QF-Test which was updated to CEF version 45.
• Official support has been dropped for Java 5, Java 6, Internet Explorer 10 and older, Firefox 37 and older as well as Eclipse/SWT 3.8 and older.

QFS is taking pains to support even very old software. QF-Test should still run, for example, under Windows XP or - after downgrading Jython and Groovy - with an SUT based on Java 5 or 6 but for systems that are no longer supported by their own vendors we cannot provide full support.

The libraries that are required for the Firefox and Eclipse/SWT versions listed above are no longer part of the default installation of QF-Test. The majority is still being maintained, albeit with limited testing. For Eclipse/SWT 3.5 - 3.8 simply download swt_legacy.zip and extract the contents into the swt directory of your QF-Test installation. For support of older browsers, please get in touch with QFS.

To ease the transition to QF-Test version 4.1, it can be used with a license for QF-Test version 4.0 until February 28, 2017. Please make use of this transition period to update your QF-Test licenses to version 4.1.

Users with a valid Maintenance Agreement are entitled to this medium upgrade for free. Without Maintenance Agreement the fee for upgrading from version 4.0 to version 4.1 is 20% of the current license price.

Please note that QF-Test can now use a license server as an alternative to the classic license mechanism which only supports one local network. This makes it possible to float QF-Test licenses across multiple sites - even world-wide - to fully utilize them. Even at a single site the license server has many advantages for managing multiple licenses.

The server itself is free of charge and server licenses are very reasonably priced. If interested, please get in touch with our sales team for more information and an individual offer.

New features:

•  The re-run capabilities are now officially available and documented.
•  The QF-Test Jenkins plugin was updated for Jenkins version 2.1.
•  On macOS QF-Test now uses the standard key bindings for that system.  Users that prefer Windows bindings (or simply have gotten used to QF-Test's non-Mac bindings) can keep them via the command line  argument -keybindings=classic.
• The QF-Test macOS App now includes a bundled JRE so manual JRE installation is no longer required.
• Support for the AJAX toolkit Vaadin was updated so that the Vaadin resolver can now be customized.
• When debugging tests, QF-Test now shows a warning when 'Continue execution from here' is attempted on a node that is not part of the current execution stack as doing so would lose the current variable bindings.
• Chooser dialogs now include a search filter.
• It is now possible to directly highlight the target component via  the popup menu for QF-Test IDs contained in variable tables or rc.getComponent statements in SUT scripts.

Bugs fixed:

• The QF-Test Java Configuration Tool (qfconfig) always displayed the default Java program upon startup.
• The small arrows showing tree node execution state were not always displayed correctly.
• Errors resulting from execution timeout are now shown correctly in the report.
• In WebDriver mode QF-Test now avoids starting two Chrome instances with the same user profile directory.
• Jars in the QF-Test plugin directory could interfere with the startup of a WebDriver based SUT.
• Alerts can now be handled on all WebDriver based browsers.