Grab Automation by the Cucumbers

  In my previous company, we started experimenting with automation. I had fun trying out the various tools and languages that were around, but we finally settled on implementing WATiN (for anyone interested, the others we seriously considered were Selenium and Sahi). I think we settled on the correct framework, but didn't have a good way of creating tests. What I had written was code that would replicate a workflow, but it turned out to be very flaky and not as much use as I'd originally hoped (if anyone from there is reading this, sorry about that).
  I have recently moved to a new job, and the automation there is going to be driven using Cucumber, with Watir-Webdriver as the framework. I think that Cucumber will sit very well with me, because the scenarios that are written very much invoke my idea of a test case (Given your application is at some state, When you do something, Then this will happen).
  I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in.

More Time to Test

  My company has recently announced that it has ended support for IE7. Lets all be thankful for that. Ever since I started testing web applications, I have had one heuristic that has served me well:

  'If it is going to break, it will break in IEx' - the x was originally IE6, then IE7 and now it is IE8.

   The sad thing is, I actually like IE. I preferred the interfaces of 6, 7 and 8 to the minimalist style of Chrome, FF4+ and now IE9. I have used it for years, meaning I had little trouble in finding settings, since I knew the general menu layout as well as the terminology it uses.
  But the fact remains that, unless I have specific reason to use another browser for testing, I have to use IE8 because any problems that are in the software that are browser related, are likely to be caused by IE incompatibility than anything else.