Responsive Test Automation with the Galen Framework

Problem Statement : In one of my projects client was redesigning their website and they were curious to get checked their UI design on different OS and browsers too to ensure nothing was distorted and the design/pixel was as expected. So, we started exploring some automation tool which would serve the purpose with minimal effort. After much brainstorming and exploring the google we came across Galen - a tool which was open source, was able to perform UI testing on multi device and multi OS, well integrated with Jenkins, Saucelabs and Browserstack too. Moreover, a tool which provided a brilliant self explanatory reports with screenshots, error reports and detailed descriptions of the executed test.

Detailed overview of your session - More and more web page pages are optimized for mobile devices using a responsive layout. With the help of responsive design, the layout of the web page adapts to the different screensize of the mobile device to provide a nice look and feel.

A web page that contains lots of pages makes it extremely complicated and time consuming to test the layout for each page on all screen sizes from mobile devices to desktop computers. Besides the different hardware, the web page layout needs also be tested in different web browsers from Chrome to Internet Explorer in different software versions.

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience like easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

Responsive web design is becoming more important as the amount of mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of total internet traffic. This trend is so prevalent that Google has begun to boost the ratings of sites that are mobile friendly if the search was made from a mobile device. This has the net effect of penalizing sites that are not mobile friendly.

The responsive web design responds to the needs of the users and the devices they’re using. The layout changes based on the size and capabilities of the device and provides the enhanced user-experience by re-structuring the contents as per the end-user devices. With plethora devices releasing every day, this has gained significance in the web designing and along with it came the testing challenges. In this talk, we are going to discuss the challenges in testing RWD websites and how to overcome those by using the tools available online.

I have chosen Galen tool to demonstrate the automation of Responsive web design testing. Come and experience the talk to be enlightened about this new found tool.

Why Galen?

Galen is an open source framework built for responsive websites. It provides the feasibility to test the various pages on screen sizes and browsers. The test and spec files can be written in plain English which makes it easier for the business people to understand and contribute. This can also be used as a guide for the UI developers where they build the layout based on the spec files agreed by the business.

Your ideal target audience : Testers, UI developers, Web Developers, UX

Key takeaways for the audience:

1. Understanding the nuances of Responsive Web Design and the need to automate it.

2. Knowing the variety of tools to used test those responsive websites

3. How to approach Responsive Web Design testing.

4. A quicker solution for UI testing

4. What is Galen and how to use it

5. Hands-on demo of Galen

6. Testing on different OS and browser with minimal effort

7. Separate reports of the test executed on different browser and OS

8. Integration with Saucelabs, Browserstack, Selenium Grid

9. CI integration (Jenkins)

10.Integration with Gulp (Task Runner)