What it does set out to do - as the full title suggests - is show how you can practically implement WebDriver automation to add business value, avoiding common pitfalls in the process.
The Selenium Guidebook By Dave Haeffner Code Domain GoingIt does a bit of that, but its more about my personal experience of working through it, and reflects on how I might improve my learning process in the code domain going forward.There were points when I was working through The Selenium Guidebook that I felt frustrated - not with the book, which is very good - but with my own lack of progress.
![]() The Selenium Guidebook By Dave Haeffner Full Title SuggestsThe frustrations came when something wasnt working for me and I felt I didnt have the knowledge to understand why or fix it. I tried to think about why I was allowing myself to get frustrated. Coping with a lack of coding knowledge First, a slightly boring aside to explain where my knowledge stood when I started the book. However, in the intervening time I had taken a job that didnt involve web testing and so my knowledge had gone stale. In resurrecting it, I decided to go back to coding with Ruby - which I had been learning the basics of previously - because I felt the less intuitive syntax of Java hadnt helped my learning of WebDriver. Haeffner advises that an ability to code is not necessarily needed upfront. Whilst that is certainly true, in my experience learning is slower if you dont have a lot of coding knowledge. I think the biggest problem caused by my lack of coding experience was not always being able to make good guesses about the causenature of errors - and error messages - I encountered, and therefore struggling to correct them. Troubleshooting hints for the examples in the book could be helpful, but are probably impractical given the variety of problems students might face. It might have been useful to know exactly which versions of particular Ruby gems Dave had tested his examples with. Im not sure if it was ever really the cause of a problem I hit (there are still a few examples that I havent managed to get working) but I did wonder at times whether an issue might relate to my having installed the latest version of gem X whereas Dave possibly had been working with an earlier one. Putting in the hours Dave Haeffner does very generously offer up his own contact details in the book to answer questions. I deliberately resisted that because I didnt think it was fair on the author; and not helpful to me to have the answers provided too easily. Mostly I got failing examples working by putting in the hours and using the routes you might expect: - Google and StackOverflow to look up error messages - seeing if the provided sample files ran on my setup and, if so, comparing that sample file with what I had written to find the difference. And in one extreme case using a file comparison tool to try and find what the hell was different between my failing project and the provided one. The difference turned out to be not in my Ruby code but with gems I was using not being listed in my gemfile.) Of course, this pain is actually good for learning and I need to remember that when the frustration bites. By the time I had gone through all the material in the book I felt it had been a really good investment and I had stopped worrying about whether I should have been able to get through it more smoothly. I shall certainly be keeping The Selenium Guidebook on hand and coming back to it. Finding the right IDEEditor Something practical that I think would have helped me, and that I still need to sort out, was either a better IDE or better knowledge of the one I was using. The Selenium Guidebook By Dave Haeffner Free Ruby IDEsI suppose this too falls under the heading of a lack of coding experience.) After looking for free Ruby IDEs, I went with Aptana Studio. Quite possibly I dont have Aptana set up correctly - I struggled even to find useful documentation - but I found it of limited use beyond picking up syntax errors. For Alan Richardsons Java course I had used the suggested IDE, Jetbrains IntelliJ. And I missed its extensive code completion suggestions here, and its ability to pick up basic typos on top of syntax errors.
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