Hands on Automated Testing with Playwright is the start of a wonderful conversation with the Playwright community!

I really loved Faraz Kelhini & Butch Mayhew's new book, "Hands on Automated Testing with Playwright: Create fast, reliable, and scalable tests for modern web apps with Microsoft's automation framework". 

Butch Mayhew is a Playwright Ambassador, dedicated to helping others, and it shows! I fully recommend this book -- and Butch's many LinkedIn Learning Playwright courses -- for those attempting to understand Playwright. 

The real beauty of the book is that it feels like only the start of a continuing conversation: 

• Sample code is included: Just like Butch's courses, it provides a GitHub repo chock-full of code examples where Butch and Faraz walks through the examples chapter by chapter so the reader can see implemented the concepts that they both explain. 
• Reference links is included: Need to do a deep dive on a topic? The authors have included links to the primary sources, such as Faraz Kelhini's article, Understanding Shadow Dom. (2019)
• QR codes that connect to the Playwright community: Want to connect with the Playwright community at large? See a Playwright community calendar? Scan the included QR codes in the books.

It's no problem if you have never used Playwright before. Readers are walked through installing the toolsets, writing & running their first tests, setting up VS Code, and how to configure Playwright settings. 

The book also walks the reader through chapters on AI-Powered Test Generation using GitHub CoPilot and the Playwright Model Context Protocol (MCP), generating tests with Playwright's Codegen feature. 

Thank you so much for the advance copy, Butch! 

Practicing Playwright:

• Part One: Time to Practice Playwright!
• Part Two: New Playwright Course: Playwright Essential Training by Butch Mayhew
• Part Three: Hands on Automated Testing with Playwright by Butch Mayhew is the start of a wonderful conversation with the Playwright community!
• Part Four: What happens when you pair Playwright with something other than TypeScript?
• Part Five: Logging in by Storing and Using an Authentication Cookie in Your Automated Tests
• Part Six: How to Detect Broken Images On Your Site
• Part Seven: Dynamically Creating Test Data with a DataFactory
• Part Eight: Visual Testing With Playwright
• Part Nine: API Testing, Intercepting Network Requests, and Mocking APIs
• Source Code: https://github.com/tjmaher/practicing-playwright

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Software Engineer in Test

BlueSky | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles
GitHub repo

#OpenToWork: Looking for My Next Test Automation Adventure!

Hey everyone! I'm looking for my next adventure in test automation.

After an incredible but way too short run at SELF ID, building mobile test frameworks for our React Native app, I'm ready to bring my expertise to a new team that values quality, automation, and collaboration.

What I bring to the table:

With a decade of experience as an automation developer, I don't just write tests. Embedded with a development team, I learn about the wants and needs of the stakeholders - the developers, the designers, the business analysts, the business itself - and construct a test automation framework, two week sprint by two week sprint, that truly fits their needs. [ See my Programming Projects ]

The quicker the automation framework is stood up, the quicker I can get to the truly fun stuff: Making sure the brand-new untested features fresh off the developer's local machine meets not just the spec, wireframes, requirements, and design, but also to make sure it matches those undocumented expectations that were discussed but may have not been carefully documented... something that AI will never be able to do.

My most recent project? DetoxDemo (https://github.com/tjmaher/detox-demo) - a complete mobile automation framework showcasing:

• Mobile test automation with Detox + TypeScript for React Native iOS apps
• Page Object architecture that keeps tests clean and maintainable
• Allure Reports integration with visual test results published via CI/CD
• GitHub Actions workflows with configurable test execution options

On top of my extensive software testing experience, the last ten years has been focused on test automation. I've built automation frameworks from scratch at SELF Id and ThreatStack. I’ve created automated development courses for Test Automation University. I’ve written extensively about testing (check out my blog "Adventures in Automation"), and organized the Ministry of Testing - Boston meetup for years.

What I'm looking for:

Software Engineer in Test or SDET roles where I can design automation strategies, sharing my testing worldview with developers, and build frameworks that the entire team can use to check their work before merging into main. Remote work is preferred, but I am open to hybrid opportunities in the Boston area or Southeastern Massachusetts.

My toolbox includes: Detox, some Playwright, Selenium WebDriver, Ruby/Capybara, Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, React Native, CI/CD pipelines, and Allure Reports. But more importantly - I know how to research new tools, validate stakeholder needs, and implement solutions that fit your tech stack.

If you know of opportunities, I'd love to connect. Drop me a message or comment below. I'm always happy to chat about testing, automation, or that one flaky test that's driving you crazy.


I will be speaking at Joe Colantonio's TestGuild in April 2026. See you then!

#OpenToWork #SDET #TestAutomation #SoftwareEngineering #QualityEngineering


Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Software Engineer in Test

BlueSky | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

AI wants to take over QA? Let it!

Someone on LinkedIn posted: "The smartest engineering leaders I know have been divesting from manual QA for years now and I think that bet is going to pay off big in today's world.

"If your development process still relies heavily on manual QA and your engineers are now using AI-assisted coding tools, you've created a new bottleneck".

My response? Let it! 

I am all in favor of outsourcing the "boring stuff" to automated tests or AI. Who really wants to check for the umpteenth time that the same page in the web app has the correct working functionality on Chrome, Firefox, MS Edge, Mac Safari, and all the various screen sizes. BORING!

Now, it takes a real software tester to make sure the brand-new untested features fresh off the developer's local machine meets not just the spec, wireframes, requirements, and design, but also to make sure it matches those undocumented expectations that were discussed but may have not been carefully documented. Or that the user experiences matches how the designer really wanted the web app to operate. Or that the user experience doesn't change too much when you operate the web app in the wild.

That all is fun part of the job ... realizing during testing that the business requirement or the design were actually unclear, and that you as a tester found a unique edge case.

Let AI do the mindless drudgery. Just as long as I can still focus on the fun stuff! 

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Software Engineer in Test

BlueSky | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

DetoxDemo: Now with more GitHub Action Workflow CI/CD Options!

Have you ever known that you probably should have gone to bed hours ago, but you were doing something so fun, you didn't want to stop? I am like that with my toy React Native application, DetoxDemo, which I created as part of my presentation to the AutomationGuild in April 2026.

• DetoxDemo: https://github.com/tjmaher/detox-demo/ 

Late last night, after pouring over Wix's Detox Docs for Artifacts, I decided I wanted to implement that in my GitHub Actions CI/ CD Workflow. 

Want to kick off a job to run all the Login tests in the CI/ CD platform using the GitHub Actions workflow? With the DetoxDemo GitHub:

• Go to Actions -> View all Workflows
• Under the Actions column to the left, select Build & Test iOS
• Select the [Run workflow] button to see all the choices I set up in the ios-regression.yml configuration file under the on: workflow_dispatch -> inputs
• Say you were a developer that wanted to test out their JIRA-123 branch code before merging, under "Use workflow from" they could choose branch JIRA-123 here instead of running against the main branch.
• Which test suite would you like to run? Login? SecureArea? Default is "all".
• Which iPhone 16 would you like to run the tests on? Regular iPhone 16, Pro, or Pro Max? Or maybe an iPad Mini, Air, or Pro?
• What log level? Select any range from the very verbose "trace", to throwing alerts only if things are "fatal". Default is "info".
• What level of artifacts do you want to capture for logs, screenshots, or videos? All, just failing, or none?
• Do you want to run performance testing with Detox Instruments? We have that option! Still looking how the Wix Incubator's Detox Instruments works with CI/CD.
• Or you can just scroll down to the bottom and select [Run Workflow] and kick off the default values set up in ios-regression.yml
• A new "Build & Test iOS" run will be created. Feel free to click into the run to see it run through the build -> test -> publish-allure-reports -> cleanup stages where you can see all Homebrew, RubyGems, Cocoapods, Node.js, and Applesimutils are configured and run.
• If you click into the "build" stage, you can see it work through tasks such as "Set up job", "Checkout repository", "Setup Homebrew", "Setup Ruby", "Cache Homebrew and RubyGems", etc. It takes 30 minutes for a Detox-embedded build to be generated.

New Features of Detox Demo: CI/CD + Logging + Reports, oh my!

To prepare for the talk I'll be giving to the TestGuild in a few months, since I can't share actual source code of the SELF Mobile app or the automation source code I've written on-the-job, I created a toy project, Detox Demo at https://github.com/tjmaher/detox-demo, a React Native app tested with Wix's Detox + TypeScript. 

It's got reports using Detox's Allure Adapter

It's got GitHub Pages integration at https://tjmaher.github.io/detox-demo/ios/ ! 

It's got logs you can examine! 

It's got CI / CD with GitHub Action workflows, which you can kick off manually by branch, by cron job, or by each time you push code into main! 

And it's got documentation up the wazoo in the README file, since I just don't know how to be brief.

And it's all open-source, so you can examine the source code to see how things were set up. 

DetoxDemo is a working React Native demo app that gives examples of:

• Mobile automation tests written in Detox + TypeScript
• Commonly used test code refactored into Page Objects
• Common methods used by Page Objects refactored into a Base Page
• Log reports published after a test run, written like a manual test plan testers can follow
• Pre-written yarn scripts to build and test stored in a package.json
• detox-allure2-adapter set up in .detoxrc.js and the e2e/jest.config.js
• Allure Reports configured to show historical data
• CI/CD provided by GitHub Action workflow
• A working React Native mobile app for iOS complete with source code
• A detailed README documenting the Project Structure, and all the setup for the tools and technologies of this project, along with listing various historical tidbits.
• Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) showing the DetoxDemo iPhone desktop icon and a setup script generating various sizes of icons.

My LinkedIn Year in Review - AI Style head to head matchup between Coauthor.Studio and Claude.ai.

Thank you, Vernon Richards for referencing Rewind.coauthor.studio ... I love the cute LinkedIn Rewind graphic it produced! I think it was worth the 99 cents.

The AI generated post it produced. though, it just didn't sound like me. Too long. Not chatty or informal enough. The phrasing was off as if instead of bullet points about my year it was trying to unfold a grand epic story that just wasn't there. Then, I then asked Claude.ai to edit the post it so it copied my writing style from the Media section of this blog ... and it was scary how similar to me it sounded!

I'll copy-and-paste the CoAuthor.studio and Claude.ai and put then in the post so people can compare the language.

Hey, a software tester's gotta test!

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjmaher1/

First Time Using GitHub CoPilot to Create a ReactNative LoginPage app. What Could Go Wrong?

Do you want to practice mobile test automation development but need a React Mobile app to test against? I have one for you: DetoxDemo, an open-source app with a Login screen, built with ReactNative + TypeScript + Mobile automation written in Detox.

The automated tests I coded myself, but the app is all GitHub CoPilot. This article is about how CoPilot stumbled, fell flat on its face, stumbled, fell again, took a breather, but eventually, after many failed attempts, limped across the finish line, creating exactly the React Native app I had been looking for.

 

Ten years ago, back when I was a newbie automation developer, I discovered a test site created by Dave Haefner: The-Internet, a website where newbie automation developers could practice their craft. Dave Haefner, the author of the Elemental Selenium newsletter and the Selenium Guidebook, two resources that really helped me out early in my career, created the site to help the software testing community.

To practice what I was learning on-the-job at my first automation development position putting together Selenium WebDriver + Java automation framework, I created, testing against that site, a toy project, Testing The-Internet and started blogging about it. I gave imaginary readers code walkthroughs how one could write a framework to test The-Internet’s Login Page. The act of being forced to explain what I am doing in various programming projects and why to imaginary readers has helped me in many parts of my career, whether it is playing around with REST Assured, setting up an Appium framework, or creating an automation framework with Ruby + Capybara.

Ten years later, to practice what I am learning at SELF ID, Inc. putting together an automation framework for their React Native mobile application using Wix’s Detox + TypeScript, I wanted to put together another toy project. Call it DetoxDemo. The problem was that, although I knew what the automation part would look like, I didn’t know of a React Native mobile application to test against. Wishing there was a React Native app like Dave Haefner’s The-Internet, I had a crazy idea:

Why not try to vibe-code a React Native mobile app, creating one with GitHub CoPilot, that emulates his The-Internet Login page?

Sure, there were some minor hurdles, the first being that I don’t know how to “vibe-code”. I’ve been using GitHub CoPilot for a year at two different workplaces, but nothing to this extent.

The second hurdle is that I am not a software developer. With React Native applications, I have been a manual and an automated tester. I just don’t know React Native development.

Creating an entire app using a toolset I am unfamiliar with in a language I don’t understand? What could go wrong?