Automation
24 articles
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Page Object Model: UI Test Architecture So You Don't Drown in Maintenance
Locators and steps right inside tests are a time bomb: change one button and you fix it in 50 places. Page Object Model: a class per page encapsulates locators and actions, tests call methods. What belongs in a Page Object, what doesn't, Component Objects, fluent/loadable, anti-patterns, and when POM is overkill.
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Waits in UI Tests: Why Tests Flake and How to Wait Right
The #1 cause of flaky tests is bad waiting. Why sleep() always loses, why implicit wait is treacherous, how to wait on a condition with explicit wait, what auto-wait changes in Playwright/Cypress, and how to rewrite a flaky test from a timer to a state.
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Playwright vs Cypress vs Selenium in 2026: Which to Pick for E2E
A 2026 comparison of the three main E2E frameworks: Playwright (multi-browser, auto-waiting, Trace Viewer, the default for new projects), Cypress (best DX and time-travel debugging), and Selenium (the W3C standard, most languages and Grid). A difference matrix, who should pick what, and how not to get the choice wrong.
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API Test Automation: Where to Start and What to Cover in 2026
API tests are the base of the pyramid: faster and more stable than UI, catching logic bugs earlier and cheaper. A first-person take: what to check beyond 200 (schema, error paths, authorization, boundaries, idempotency), data setup/teardown and isolation, validating the contract against OpenAPI/JSON Schema, and the 2026 toolset (Playwright request, pytest+httpx, REST Assured, Hurl, Schemathesis). With a good-API-test checklist.
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Test Reporting in 2026: Allure vs ReportPortal vs Currents vs Native Playwright
"Green/red in the console" isn't a report. Your team and manager need run history, trends, flaky detection, and something they can share. A first-person take: Playwright's native HTML report and Trace Viewer, Allure, ReportPortal, and Currents/Cypress Cloud — what each gives you, what it can't do, and who it suits. With a decision matrix and a good-report checklist.
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Locators That Survive a Redesign: A Selector Strategy for UI Automation
UI automation fails from brittle locators far more often than from real bugs. A first-person take: selector priority (role/label → data-testid → text → CSS → XPath last), why positional XPath and auto-generated classes are time bombs, how to agree on data-testid with developers, the dynamic-content and i18n traps, and how it maps across Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, and Appium. With a good-locator checklist and a list of anti-patterns.
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Manual → Automation: How to Make the Switch Without Breaking
"Learn Python and Selenium" is the most common and most useless advice. The switch to automation doesn't break on syntax. A first-person take: the three pits (automating everything, thinking automation is "writing tests", dropping the manual mindset), a route that works (minimal language, start with API tests, then UI with architecture, Git/CLI/CI), why your manual past is an advantage (you know WHAT to automate, you're the oracle, repro steps, exploration), and the transition anti-patterns.
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UI Test Automation Architecture: Page Object and What Comes After It
A good automation suite is measured not by the number of tests but by the cost of change. A first-person take: what a Page Object actually is (it hides HOW behind WHAT), why assertions inside the object are an anti-pattern, the layers above Page Object (components, API setup, test data), where people over-engineer, and the rule of three against premature abstraction. Plus the test-of-a-healthy-test: it reads like a user scenario, with no selectors in the body.
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Autotests that aren't in CI are a hobby: wiring tests into the pipeline without drowning
400 autotests that run "sometimes, locally" are not automation. A first-person take: run layers (a PR gate budgeted in minutes / post-merge / nightly), sharding and why parallelism kills dependent tests, a retry policy that doesn't mask flakiness (passed-on-retry = yellow, not green), quarantine with exactly two exits, the red-main rule, failure artifacts (a trace instead of re-debugging), and suite health metrics.
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Registration & login testing checklist — with a Playwright autotest for every item
Login is the first screen a user sees and a favorite spot for production incidents. The "checklist item → how to automate it" format: user enumeration via identical error messages, password reset with a single-use token, logout and the back button, HttpOnly/Secure cookies via context.cookies(), sessions across two tabs, mocking 429 for lockout UI, the storageState pattern so you don't log in inside every test — and what parts of auth should never go into e2e.
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What to automate and what to leave manual — and why 'automate everything' kills the suite
'Automate everything' turns into a red suite nobody trusts within six months. A first-person take: the test we fixed for half a year when we should have deleted it; why an autotest costs not 'to write' but 'to maintain for years'; what's worth automating (stable, frequent, expensive by hand, deterministic) and what to leave to a human; the pyramid as a decision calculator; why a flaky test is worse than a missing one, plus an 'automate or not' checklist.
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Search and filters testing checklist — and how to automate every item with Playwright
Search and filters are almost everywhere, and the bugs are always the same. A checklist of what to test (edge-case queries, debounce, request races, empty state, XSS, filters in the URL, resilience to backend errors, localization) — and for each item a real Playwright test via network interception with page.route. Plus what NOT to automate in e2e.
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AI bots that play your game: game-QA automation in 2026
AI agents for game testing: how they differ from scripted automation, what they actually do (24/7 exploratory play, crashes, balance, video logs), the limits and risks, who's on the market (modl.ai, AltTester, GameDriver), when to use AI bots and when plain automation is enough. A pilot checklist.
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Test data in automated tests: a source of flakiness and coupling — and how to prepare it
Test data is one of the most invisible sources of flaky tests, bigger than locators. Isolation, determinism (freeze clock, seeded Faker), uniqueness under parallelism, factories vs fixtures vs API setup, cleanup and anonymizing prod data. A 12-point checklist.
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Claude in QA is overrated — 10 scenarios where it falls short, and where it actually pays off
The QA community has hyped «Claude will replace manual QA». In production those promises don't hold up. A contrarian breakdown without anti-AI rhetoric: 10 overrated scenarios, 5 systemic limits, hidden risks, and 5 places where it actually works.
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AI and auto-healing locators in autotests — what actually works in 2026
The most expensive part of a mature autotest suite is locator maintenance. A whole class of products was built around that pain under the «AI-powered» label. 8 sections: what's under the hood, Healenium vs Mabl/testRigor/Functionize, where LLMs actually work, risks, and a rollout plan.
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API tools for QA in 2026 — Postman, Bruno, Insomnia, Hurl: which to pick when
A comparison of four API tools on the dimensions that matter in real QA work. Postman pushed into the cloud, Bruno grew up as a git-friendly alternative, Hurl owns the CI niche.
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Visual Regression testing: a complete guide
Functional test is green, button clicks, form submits — and the user looks at the screen and sees the icon shifted 4 pixels left and overlapping the text. Visual regression closes that gap.
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Maestro vs Appium: what to choose for mobile UI testing in 2026
Appium has held the throne since 2014, but if you're picking a stack for mobile UI tests today — look at Maestro. Faster to install, simpler to write, and for casual projects often covers 100% of needs.
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Playwright auto-wait: why you don't need explicit waits
If you came to Playwright from Selenium — your first instinct is to write waitForSelector before every action. 90% of the time it's redundant work: Playwright already waits for you.
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The test pyramid is outdated: what big teams use instead
Mike Cohn's classic pyramid (2009): lots of unit, medium integration, few E2E. The model was born when UI frameworks were heavy. Now Playwright and Cypress run in seconds — what teams use instead.
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Why your Selenium tests fail intermittently: 5 reasons for flaky tests
Flaky tests are the biggest source of distrust in automation. Per the Google Testing Blog, about 1.5% of all green CI runs contained at least one flaky failure. Usually the problem is in the test, not the product.
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Playwright: where to start and how to learn
Playwright became the web automation standard in 2023-2025. A curated set of resources to help you switch from Selenium/Cypress or start from scratch.
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adb for mobile QA: 40 commands that save hours
ADB (Android Debug Bridge) is the main tool for mobile QA on Android. A list of commands that are actually used during regression and bug triage.