

Show HN: Usetrace – Virtual users doing your repetitive web testing - dhpe
http://usetrace.com

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jvandyke
Great start to a great product.

We have an Angular app w/ OAuth flows and connections to outside apps. We
started with Protractor running locally and on SauceLabs, but it hasn't seen
much love because adding new tests takes time, especially for complicated
stuff like oauth flows.

Your product _should_ allow our "Product guys" and QA guy write the smoke
tests in much less time and maintain them without having to write code or take
up developer time, which is huge in a team of 2 guys who write front-end code
and would be maintaining the tests.

The only real issues I have right now are 1\. Errors can be hard to track down
since there isn't any console output. That's something I miss from SauceLabs
which was a huge help. 2\. Smaller, but annoying, pasting isn't allowed when
creating a test. This is painful for username/password entry. It would also be
nice to use some kind of variable to ease this. 3\. I'm unsure of pricing.
When I'm logged in, I see that I have the free plan, but I see no limits or
details about the plan.

Other than that, it was a great feeling to get a basic smoke test, plus
jenkins integration, plus flowdock integration within an hour of discovering
the app. Again, great job!

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dhpe
Hi, thanks for the awesome feedback!

About pricing, you can test all features for free. If you like it and continue
to use it, you can subscribe to one of our plans.

Copy pasting is a feature which we haven't solved yet. It would definitely be
a huge productivity boost when making traces.

Console output is in our backlog but currently we focus on more important
issues.

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mef
Pretty cool. Signed up and figured out how to start using it right away, which
is in and of itself a great thing.

Questions:

1\. When creating a trace, how do you specify when you're finished?

2\. Is there a way to set a single trace to run on all browsers?

3\. How do you specify what constitutes a "success" vs. a "fail" for any given
trace?

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dhpe
1\. Just click "Run Trace" to verify the automation works.

2\. Yes, from Dashboard it's currently FF&Chrome only, but via API you can
include IEs. I can help you to get started (mailto arto@usetrace.com)

3\. If a Trace can be walked through it passes. A Trace includes steps like
clicks on buttons and checks (explicit things that must be visible on the
page, e.g. text or other elements).

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pionar
I really like the Visual Studio "load testing" [1] for this purpose. My team
uses it. It doesn't just include a trace of paths through the application, it
performs important load testing and analysis. Well worth the price.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms182594.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms182594.aspx)

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joncalhoun
How different is this from
[https://www.rainforestqa.com/](https://www.rainforestqa.com/) ?

I haven't used either extensively, but they look similar in a few ways, yet
different. I am curious if anyone with knowledge of the two could elaborate on
the differences.

~~~
michaelmior
For me, I'm more interested in how this differs from Selenium. Is it just
making this sort of testing process easier?

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eeheino
We've build on top of selenium. Traces are modular in a similar fashion than
programming parametrized modules and they can be updated separately - Mixing
the benefits of programmable tests with the easiness of record&playback.

~~~
jprince
It's more of a pain in the ass but I can write my own tests with Selenium in
Cucumber or RSPEC or what have you, and I can use all kinds of wrappers for
it(Watir, TelluriumDriver, etc). I understand the ease of just doing a "trace"
graphical test instead of writing the code, but why would I pay you 90$/month
for the privilege? Not only that, I can get much more granular with my RSPEC-
Selenium tests. Oh yes, I can also re-use methods that encapsulate sequences
of decisions like sign_up_for_website instead of having to resign up every
time I make a new trace.

I can go through a sign up flow and then grab the last user with Ruby and do
actual checks on it's methods and members, and then go back to browser
navigation. This seems like a less free way to do fewer checks with a prettier
interface.

~~~
dhpe
We're currently providing a way to reuse the beginning of trace in other
traces. Most traces start with logging in to the app, so you can create the
login trace, and share it to all other traces. So you end up defining signing
up once.

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lazyant
Very nice, dashboard and test working as expected, intuitive etc. Only comment
is that from the front page I wasn't sure what I was signing up for (saw no
demo)

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Theodores
It also wasn't obvious that you had to scroll down to read more stuff even
though it was yet another Twitter Bootstrap thing that we should all know and
understand in this 'sign up to our Saas startup' context.

~~~
lazyant
I'm trained because it's been a year or so since apparently all startup web
sites are like that, an option I've seen is to add an arrow to indicate
there's more.

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rpedela
On Ubuntu 12.04 with latest Firefox, clicking signup locks up Firefox and
subsequently locks up the system. Eventually I am able to launch a terminal
and kill the Firefox process. Using latest Chrome, everything works fine.

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wehadfun
How much time does it take to set this up? I ask because it would be nice to
set up the test for free then start paying the $90-$700 to actually run unless
this is something that a busy engineer can set up in a few hours.

~~~
eeheino
You can create a trace for your web app and integrate it with Jenkins in 5
minutes.

One customer, that didn't have any automated testing, was able to create 40
cross-browser traces and integrate runs with Jenkins in two days. The average
running time for their whole set is about 3 minutes.

When you register account, you can test for free. CI and reporting are under
settings.

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jprince
Why wouldn't you just use Cucumber or RSPEC+Selenium(or some other variant
library for a different language) to do it?

~~~
dhpe
Most of the teams do not have required skills for scripted test automation.
Even the teams that do have the skills struggle to have time for testing.

Personally after doing programmed Selenium tests for 9 years, I have learned
that when releasing software daily, scripted tests lag all the time behind
development. Providing a simplified testing tool that allows easy trace
creation and maintenance without programming is needed.

However traditional record & playback tools are not working for agile teams
due to maintenance burden. Usetrace brings concepts from the scripted testing
available to non-programmers.

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SimpleXYZ
You really need to work on your sign-up form validation. At least add client
side validation.

~~~
dhpe
Some improvements made. Going to be better!

