Siesta 6.0.0-alpha-4 released with native user simulation and dashboard UI

We are happy to present the next alpha release in Siesta 6 series – siesta-6.0.0-alpha-4. It is available on npm.

In this release we have added native user action simulation, closing the gap in browser testing, and a dashboard web interface for test projects.

Browser testing

Siesta 6 is a truly ubiquitous testing tool – it can run tests in Node.js, Deno and browsers. In browsers Siesta supports both in-process and out-of-process testing! One testing tool for all environments.

Having both in-process and out-of-process testing for browsers is important, since these are different use cases which previously required the use of different tooling. In-process testing is ideal for testing web-components, single-page applications and other cases where you need to intensively interact with the JavaScript testing context. On the other hand, out-of-process testing is a natural choice when testing classic “multi-page” applications, where you use page navigation often.

In the future, we plan to also add an intermediary mode – same-domain in-process testing (equivalent of enablePageRedirect option in Siesta 5), which will allow same-domain page navigation. This mode will combine the convenience of in-process testing with page navigation possibilities.

Native user actions simulation

In this release, we have added native user actions simulation using the excellent Playwright library. This means that user actions simulated by Siesta will trigger native browser behavior, like :hover styling, precise events flow and others.

This is an important feature, support for which in Siesta 5 was not optimal (native events in Siesta 5 can not be used with the cloud testing providers). This feature ensures that you can test real browser behavior (which is often slightly different across browsers).

Dashboard user interface

And finally, this release features a web interface for running your tests similar to the one of Siesta 5. Currently it mimics the feature set of Siesta 5 UI, but we plan to continuously improve it for an even better user experience.

Improvements already in place includes:

• The possibility to launch individual t.it() sections directly from the UI, without having to manually update the source code with t.iit()
• The possibility to change the layout of the results panel / test iframe.

See it yourself

Next steps

As requested by our users, the current immediate goal will be to add support for testing web applications created with Sencha frameworks. Then we will continue implementing remaining Siesta 5 features, like code coverage and reports.

If you have any particular feature you would like to see prioritized in Siesta, please leave a comment below or drop us a line in the issues tracker.

Stay tuned for future releases.

Happy testing!

Connect

Homepage: https://siesta.works

NPM package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@bryntum/siesta

Github: https://github.com/bryntum/siesta

Discord channel: https://discord.gg/6mwJZGnwbq