New Twitter Web Interface

Twitter is rolling out its new Web Interface. Today my twitter account @rajamanickam_a has received the new web interface.



You can see more details about this new twitter here.




Find below the key featuere.

- You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics.

-easy to see embedded photos, videos, and other media content directly on Twitter

-When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject.

-You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

You can share your new Twitter experience thro' comments.

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Tips for doing effective QTP script Development

Creating automation scripts using QTP (Quick Test Professional) is mostly same as developing an application.

We need to follow the standard procedures to develop the scripts.

Find below some the automation script development tips based on my experience.

If you want to learn QTP from me, you can refer this previous blog post.

• Read the Requirements completely and repeatedly till understanding it clearly without any ambiguity. It is better to create own automation testcases/requirements based on the manual test cases or business requirement document.



• Highlight or make note of key requirements in the requirement document. And, highlight the points that are difficult to understand.



• Don't hesitate to approach the developer/customer/client if you need any clarification in the requirement and also don't hesitate to inform if any of the requirements is unrealistic. Prepare a list of requirements or test cases which can not be automated.



• QTP Script development Team also should participate in the requirement analysis before starting any application development activity. QTP Automation team can give suggestions (e.g giving unique name/id for each window so that object identification problem can be avoided when creating QTP scripts) for the application development Team for improving effectiveness of the QTP script development.



• Start working on coding/scripting part only after getting clear understanding of the overall Design of the system. i-e First you should concentrate more on gathering enough details for preparing your QTP automation framework.



• Enforce Review and Walk Through Activities. It should be done during every phase of the automation script development. i-e Automation frame work should be reviewed by each member of the Automation Team. And, everyone should review the Object Repository once after adding all the required objects with required properties and with meaningful logical name.



• Try to setup Development Environment similar to production environment. Otherwise you will face lot of difficulties while running the QTP script against the production application once after completing your script development using development/testing application. You should use AOM (Automation Object Modeol)to move the script settings from development environment to production (i-e Test execution) environment



• Do unit testing immediately after developing each small functionality. For example once after adding the object repository, use the Highlight feature in the Object Repository to make sure that the added Object can be identified.



• Give updates of the progress to the client/customer frequently. If you are facing any difficulty/issue remember to specify in the updates.



• Make list of things that will vary from Development Environment and Production environment. For example path of config file and Recovery Scenario file.



• Prepare a user guide document and deliver it along with code. It should clearly specify the steps required for running the scripts and for analysing script. And, it should contain enough details to run the scripts partially, if the script execution fails in between the execution.
  

Let me know thro' comments if you want to add some new tips.

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Simple Step for getting discount for our QTP training program

I am in the process of promoting our blog, and planning to write more articles about Software Testing, QTP automation, web development and about our products and offers.

So, I am trying to get more email subscribers for our blog so that the blog posts can reach Inbox of the readers.

As part of this promotion, today I am announcing drastic discount for the email subscribers for joining our QTP online training program. This Offer will end in October 24.

So, if you want to get the discount for our QTP online training program, you can just subscribe to our blog.

i-e Just follow below steps to get this discount.

1. Subscribe to our blog.
2. Send me your subscribed email if you are interested to get discount for the QTP training program.
3. I will be giving surprising Discount for our QTP training program if your email exists in the subscribers list.

The Discount may vary for the individuals based on the availability of seats. It will be somewhere between 20% to 70%.

All the email subscribers will be eligible to get our eBook free. Contact me for sending the eBook freely once after you subscribe for our blog.


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Our SMS Channels won't work for few days due to Govt. ban on Bulk SMS

Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of India has extended the ban on bulk SMS till September 30.


So, our Google SMS news Channels won't work for few more days.

The ban on Bulk SMS was imposed in the wake of the High Court judgment on the land dispute in Ayodhya.

And, it seems Bharti Airtel has completely stopped the Bulk SMS.

I am not sure whether Airtel users are receiving the Google SMS Channel News. You can share your experience thro' comments. (May be once after this temporary ban is lifted)

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Easy Learning - Added levels and Top Scorers

We have added few new features in our Easy Learning Script.

- We added Levels. You can choose Easy, Medium and Hard Level. The default level is Easy.

Easy will have only 6 boxes. Medium will have 12 boxes. And, the Hard will have 20 boxes.


- Added a feature to show Top Scorers . Currently it shows top scorers irrespective of Levels and Topics.
And, we plan to allow the users to see the top scorers based on Levels and Topics also in the next enhancement.

Name for showing in the Top scorer will be collected while forwarding the score to your friends. Everyone can try to bring their name in the Top Scorer list.



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Weekend offer for our Products and for our online QTP training program

Currently we have done lot of application and web development projects for our clients.

Mostly we do projects using php, mysql and other related technologies.

Currently I am planning to concentrate more on our own products which will help them to achieve our vision.

We are taking initiatives to develop many products. You can refer Products menu and refer the all links available under Free Apps. menu in our site

I understand that most of them are in initial stage. That's why I am planning to sell them inexpensively.

Anyway, our Team is working hard to improve them further soon. So, I am planning to start promoting our products.

As part of this promotion, I am announcing Weekend offer for our products.

If you buy our products in this weekend (September 25 and 26), you will be getting more discounts.

It is applicable for our QTP training program also.

I will be giving discount for the people who register for our QTP training program in this weekend (September 25 and 26). Contact me at rajamanickam.a@gmail.com to know the details about the discount.

If you miss this Offer you can subscribe to our announcements so that you won't miss any future offers.

And, let me know if you have any questions about this Weekend Offer.



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Updates about our Tools and Site

We have enhanced our HTML Code converter by allowing the user to choose below options.

-Encode single & double Quotes (Default value)
-Leave Single Quote
-Leave single & double Quotes

i-e Based on this selection the php code will use any of below options while calling htmlentities function.

-ENT_QUOTES
-ENT_COMPAT
-ENT_NOQUOTES

In our keyword position Finder SEO tool, we have done a small change for ignoring "www" when doing comparison in finding keyword position.

And we are testing an another SEO related tool . I will we giving details about this tool in my next blog post.

Let me know if you want to develop any similar Tool.

You might have noticed a menu header in this blog. It seems it will vary based on screen resolution and browsers. So, it me know if you find any difficulty in using this menu.


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Is your website traffic in Google Analytics Sine Wave?

Today I just noticed that most of our blog visitors traffic are showing as Sine Wave in Google Analytic report.





It is reasonable that the visitors traffic will be comparatively less during weekends. But I surprised to see the Sine wave pattern.

I would like to know whether anyone else see similar behavior in their blogs or websites.

You can share about your web traffic pattern thro' comments.





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Forum Contest - Winner(s) will get 50% Discount for online QTP Training Program

We are working on to bring our Forum as best place for sharing knowledge.

As part of this effort, I am announcing a Contest for selecting best Forum users.

Find below the details about this Contest.

This contest is for finding Forum users who use our Forum more effectively.


I will select the Winners based on below criteria.

• Number of Forum posts.


• Number of views for their Forum Posts


• Quality of their Questions and Answers in the Forum threads


• Effective usage of forum tools such as BBcode, links, image, code,polls, etc.

The Winner(s) will get 50% Discount for online QTP Training Program.

Number of Winners will be varying based on availability of seat in the Training program. (Anyway I will be choosing at least one winner).

If the Winner is not interested in using this QTP training Discount , he can allow someone else to use this discount.

And, all the Forum users who reach 50 posts in our Forum will be eligible for getting our ebook about Software Testing and QTP automation freely.

I will send the eBook to their email, if they send me (rajamanickam.a@gmail.com) an email once they reach 50 posts.

Note that we will delete the posts or account if any one post spam/junk content.


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Different Types of Object Repositories in QTP

Long back (April, 2009) I have explained about Object Repository in QTP.

In this post I will explain various types of Object repositories (OR).

If you are not familiar with Object repository, read this post after reading my previous post.

And, you should be familiar with "What is Test?" and "What is Action?" in QTP for understanding the types of object repositories.

There are two types of Object Repositories available in QTP.

They are,

1. Local object Repository (Previously it was called as per-action)

2. Shared Object Repository.

Local Object Repository

Local Object Repository stores Test Objects in a file associated with each Action. i-e Each action will have its own local object repository.

These objects can be edited from the corresponding Action.

This local object repository can NOT be used and/or edited by any other Actions within the same Test.

You can see separate ObjectRepository.bdb file inside each Action sub folder within the Test folder when you see them thro' windows explorer.

The local object repository will be created automatically and the Test objects will be automatically stored in the Local repository while doing recording.

Shared Object Repository

A shared object repository stores test objects in a file( normally .tsr file) that can be accessed by multiple Actions/Tests in read-only mode.

We need to create this Shared Object Repository manually from Object Repository Manager. (I will explain about Object Repository Manager later with video. You can subscribe to get them in your inbox.)

We can export the local object repository objects into the Shared Repository file.

Associating Repositories

Each Action can use the objects from local object repository and from multiple shared object repositories.

Association of Object repositories can be done easily from the "Associate Repositories" Dialog window which will be opened from Tools->Associate Repositories menu in the Object Repository window.


By storing objects in shared object repositories and associating these repositories with Actions/Tests in your Test, you enable multiple Actions/Tests to use the objects.

It will improve maintenance of the script.

Since each Action is allowed to take objects from many places (Local object repository and multiple Shared object repositories), you should know how QTP will handle if object with same name is located in more than one repository.

QTP will give high priority to the local object repository. It will use the object from the Local object Repository if it finds object with same name in many repositories.

And, if more than one shared object repositories are having same object (i-e object with same name, properties may vary), QTP will use the object based on the order of association.


Since the shared object repository improves maintenance and enhances the re-usability, we should use them in our Automation project.

Local object repository can be used for learning purpose. Since they are getting created automatically, it will be easy to use for the beginners.




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Inexpensive Group/Batch Training program for learning QTP

Refer this new Post to know the latest updates about QTP Training.

Few days back, I had announced about our one-to-one online QTP Training program.


And, I added a polldaddy survey asking opinion about Group/Batch training. Few people preferred Group training than the one-to-one training as the price can be less for the Group training.

I am also not having enough time to do one-to-one training.

So, I decided to start this Group training.

If you want to know about me (Trainer), you can refer my LinkedIn profile. And, you can refer pageview stats of my Google knol about QTP. More than 1K people are reading this knol every week to learn QTP and till now 47K people had gone thro' this knol.

I believe it will save price for the learners and save time for me as a win-win approach.

I would like to start this training at middle of the October month.
The price for this Group training is $175 USD only. I would like to keep this training more interactive. So, I am planning to have only limited number of people (around 3 or 4)for this training.

So, if you are interested to attend this training you can book the seat by making the payment.

You can make the payment safely using credit card or paypal by clicking "Buy Now" button. The transaction will be done in paypal site only. So, your payment transaction will be safe.

Let me (rajamanickam.a@gmail.com) know if you have any questions.


Note that $175 is only for the first batch only. I will be increasing this price for the next batch.

Because of this Group training, I will be stopping the one-to-one training program.

Anyway, if anyone wants to consult me regarding any specific thing (e.g solving object identification issues, framework design suitable for your test cases, testing any complex applications, etc) you can contact me. In this case, I will be charging $25 USD per hour.

Training will be done online thro' screensharing and voice chat. So, you should have stable internet connection.

Contact me (rajamanickam.a@gmail.com) if you need any further details

Training includes teaching the concepts, creating samples, giving assignments and clarifying any questions. And, I will be providing my eBook about Software Testing and QTP Automation freely if you haven't already bought it.


Course duration is approximately 15 to 20 hours. I can answer for your questions in our Forum even after completing the course.



And, I am planning to write more articles about software testing and QTP. So you can subscribe to our blog.

Find below the course content

• Need for Test Automation
• Introduction to QTP
• QTP IDE overview
• Add-ins
• Understanding Object Repository
• Working with Expert view and Keyword view
• Sample scripts
• CheckPoints
• RecoveryScenario
• Understanding Action Iteration and Test Iteration
• Basics of vbscript
• Using DataSheet
• Synchronization Points
• Debugging Script
• Driver Script
• Automation Frameworks
• Automation Object Model
• Reporting results
• Connecting Database
• Sending email from script
• About Descriptive programming
• Best practices
• Web Development knowledge required for automating website testing
• Using QTP for Banking/Financial Domain
• Question & Answers

QTP Online Training

View more presentations from QualityPoint Technologies.

If you are interested to join this training, you can book your slot by making payment using below "Buy Now" button. It will take you to PayPal site, and you can make the payment either using paypal or using credit card.

All the people who are completing this online training course will be getting online certificate from us. It will look something like this.


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HP has released new version of QTP as "HP Functional Testing 11.00"

HP has released new version of QTP. This new version is named as "HP Functional Testing 11.00"

You can download the evaluation verstion from HP Download site.

User your HP passport username and password to get into this downloadsite.

And, search for "qtp". You will find a link for "HP Functional Testing 11.00 Evaluation" under Trial Software.

The size of iso file is nearly 4GB. So, I haven't downloaded it now. But I want to see the release notes of the new version.

If you know any URL/Link having release notes, you can share it thro' the comments.

I would like to know whether this new release fulfilled the wishlist.

I found a document "HP Functional Testing Software"at HP site.

It lists below things as New testing capabilities for working with web-based
objects

• Recording steps on Mozilla Firefox and using the Object property to access the Firefox DOM



• Instructing HP Functional Testing to identify a Web object in the application based on its XPath location or CSS definition



• Using the attribute /* notation to identify an object based on an event associated with a web-based object



• Using the new EmbedScript/EmbedScriptFromFile and RunScript/RunScriptFromFile functions to perform operations on, or retrieve data from, the browser pages in your application

I think the capability to identify the web objects using Xpath location and CSS definition will make the job easy and I think it will improve the script readability and maintenance.

If you are interested to learn QTP refer our blogpost about online QTP training program.

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Developing Search Engine Keyword Position Finder

In my previous post I had explained about developing a script for bringing traffic.


And, we can do lot of on-page and off-page optimizations to get better search rank/position. I will talk about them in separate post.

Many webmasters outsource the SEO task to other people/companies. So, it is necessary to track the progress. i-e we should know the position of particular link/url in particular Search search for the specified Keyword.

For example, if I want to promote our ebook sales page I can ask our SEO team to promote it using social networking sites and link exchange programs.

I should know whether our SEO team work/effort has given any improvement. So, I need to know the current keyword position and the keyword position after doing SEO.


Assume that our SEO Team is working to promote the eBook sales page (http://qualitypointtech.net/ebook/index.php) for the keyword "qtp ebook", I should know the position of http://qualitypointtech.net/ebook/index.php when searching for "qtp ebook" in Google.com
Currently this position is 3. And, if this position is moved to 1 or 2 in few months I can say that our SEO Team efforts are giving benefit.

In brief, we should know the keyword position for doing effective SEO.

If I search for "qtp" instead of "qtp ebook" our sales page link won't appear in the first page of the Google.com. So, I need to navigate thro' many pages by clicking "next" to find our sales page link.

It is a time taking process. So, I thought of using a tool for doing this task and I searched for it. But I couldn't find any appropriate free tool for this purpose.

So, our Team has started creating a simple tool for finding keyword position.

Everyone can freely use this keyword position finder.

You just need to enter your keyword and the url. URL need not be the exact url. You can specify the domain name also. And this tool will return the position in Google.com and the exact url. And, our Team will continue to improve/enhance it further.

Let me know if you find any issue in using this tool. And let me know if you have any suggestion for improving it.


Let me know if you want to buy this script or want us to develop any similar tool for you. We can do it for reasonable cost.



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Simple application for converting HTML code into Entities to show them in Blogger blog

Some characters are reserved in HTML. We can not use them in the content of HTML file.

For example, < (less than symbol) is used as opening tag for HTML elements. So, we can not show it as it is when we need to show the less than symbol. i-e Reserved characters in HTML must be replaced with character entities.

The entity can be shown as &entity_name; or &#entity_number;

You can see the complete entities list here.

So, we need to convert the HTML code into equivalent Entities before putting the HTML code in blog/site.

Usually I do find and replace using notepad for converting the HTML code into Entities. It is taking process.

So, our Team has created a simple application for doing this job easily.

You can see this HTML code converter at http://qualitypointtech.net/encode/index.php

You can just put your HTML code here and can get the Entities immediately.

You can read more at our forum.



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Google Instant - See search results as you type.

Google is continuously innovating to improve its Search Engine.

The recent announcement is Google Instant.

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type (In fact it predicts the results even before you type).

Just by typing "W" in the Google search box you can immediately see the search results for "weather" even without hitting Enter key.

Google says that it is the combination of Instant results, Predication and scrolling thro' the searches.

You can turn off it if you don't want to use this feature which may slightly increase your internet usage while saving search time. Even Google will automatically turn it off if your internet connection is very slow.







If you want more details about this product you can see the below video.







SEO people started thinking about impact of this change in their SEO business.

It seems many people use Chrome Address bar for doing search. So, this Instant won't give any benefit for them.

Are you currently using browser address bar for doing search? Will you start using Google Instant in future? You can share your thoughts thro' the comments.



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Did Twitter make any change related to URL shortening?

I came to know that auto tweeting by cron jobs for our Twitter accounts were not working properly.

After doing some analysis I found that cron jobs were submitting the news successfully into our Social News site. Only tweeting part was getting failed. And this behaviour is inconsistent. i-e some news were tweeted to our Twitter accounts.

During my debugging process the failure occurs due to 140 characters limit. But previously this error didn't occur. Further troubleshooting revealed that automatic url shortening is not getting done. (I noticed that previously URLs were shortened using bit.ly. But I don't know how it was done without using any code for doing url shortening. I assumed that it was done automatically from Twitter)


Recently Twitter had shut down the basic authentication for its API.
I am not sure whether this behaviour change is due to this shut down.

Anyway, I have resolved this issue by explicitly calling bit.ly url shortening API request by adding below piece of code.

$url=make_bitly_url($url);


/* make a URL small */
function make_bitly_url($url,$format = 'xml',$version = '2.0.1')
{
  $login=""; //your bit.ly username
  $appkey=""; //your bit.ly API key. You can freely get it from bit.ly
   //create the URL
   $bitly = 'http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version='.$version.'&longUrl='.urlencode($url).'&login='.$login.'&apiKey='.$appkey.'&format='.$format;
  
  //get the url
   //could also use cURL here
   $response = file_get_contents($bitly);
  
  //parse depending on desired format
   if(strtolower($format) == 'json')
  {
   $json = @json_decode($response,true);
   return $json['results'][$url]['shortUrl'];
   }
   else //xml
   {
  $xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
   return 'http://bit.ly/'.$xml->results->nodeKeyVal->hash;
   }
}

Everything is working fine after adding above code. If you find any issue with our Tweets you can inform me.

And, it seems bit.ly is imposing Rate limits. So, it may not work if the number of requests in particular hour exceeds the Rate Limit.


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