April 12, 2017

SeConf2017: Microsoft is automating Windows, Intuit automating Mac Apps, all with Appium!

Star-Driver: Appium for the Future with Dan Cuellar
Joe Colantonio, Test Talks

https://youtu.be/aWo6aOWbCsc

"Apr 7, 2017 - It was an honor to finally meet one of my open-source heroes Dan Cuellar the creator of Appium. We had a quick chat at Selenium Conference 2017 in Austin and Dan was cool enough to let me interview him on camera. Dan shared his vision for Appium to be able to automate all things not just mobile apps".




Automate Windows And Mac Apps With The WebDriver Protocol 
Dan Cuellar, FOODIt
https://youtu.be/MgBRvQOZhec

See Dan Cuellar talk about his vision, the Star-Driver vision, where Appium can be used to automate all the things! Not just a WebDriver. Not just an App Driver. But an all-the-things driver!

Special Guests:

Yosef Durr, Senior Lead Program Manager from Microsoft: Microsoft is getting on board the open-source train with WinAppDriver. Use whatever scripting language or ecosystem you want, and pair it with Appium to test Windows apps. Yosef has been working on this for the past two years. A year ago, they launched WinDriver for the PC, still in beta.

Yosef uses Visual Studio, C#, Nougat + a tool called “Inspect” to pull meta-data you wish to use in your automation. He is also making sure you can use Appium Desktop. The goal? Test any app with this toolset! Yosef demoed the Windows Calculator to run some tests, and automate a VB 6 app, MS Paint (a classic Windows 32 app). It also tests touch-click-drag for Microsoft Edge on touchscreen devices.

You might want to find other elements such as logs, or test apps like Cortana.

This is almost out of beta! They need to fix a few performance bugs they still have.

What is next?

  • PC Version needs to get out of beta in the next month or two.
  • Appium Desktop needs to finish integration.
  • Add Windows Pen and Touch.
  • Add Windows Mobile and X-Box.
  • Should Microsoft open source the WinAppDriver itself?

See http://github.com/Microsoft/WinAppDriver for more information.

The goal is to have vendors themselves creating WebDriver and Appium implementations. Microsoft was not always this way. Jim Evans can talk all about this.


Stuart Russell, Senior Software Engineer from Intuit, joined Dan Cuellar on stage to talk about their adventure with Appium for Mac, a proof-of-concept, back in 2013. Last year, Intuit contacted Dan. They have been using Appium for Mac for the past three years, and they wanted to contribute back to the project.

With WebDriver, you have a WebDriver Client sending HTTP requests and waits, and WebDriver Server taking action and responding. In between is the JSON wire protocol a HTTP REST API. Normally, the servers are web browsers. Appium for Mac replaces it with the native part of Mac OS interface.

Application runs with Objective C + Xcode + CocoaHTTPServer.

Bill Cheeseman donated his product PFAssistive Framework to the MacOS project royalty-free, hiding all the Accessibility APIs that get quite confusing, with differences between versions of the Mac OS.
"Quechee Software is the name under which Bill Cheeseman develops macOS applications for Macintosh computers in Objective-C and Swift using Apple's Cocoa frameworks, as well as AppleScript and GUI Scripting projects. Most of Quechee Software's work is devoted to the frameworks, developer utilities and other applications sold or distributed by PreForm Assistive Technologies, LLC" - Quechee Software, Queechee, Vermont

Stuart demoed a test for TestEdit, writing, editing and dragging text in a sentence.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

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